Author Archive
Traversing Memory in The Heather Blazing
Through a juxtaposition of present-day and memory, Colm Tóibín’s second novel allows the reader to understand who the protagonist is and the pressure of his past on the present.
Violets’s Mothers
At the start of Alex Hyde’s debut novel, we cannot imagine how its characters’ stories are connected, but by the end we understand that what they share is far more important than what keeps them apart.
Lucy by the Sea’s Pandemic Year
It seems—for Lucy, and perhaps for Elizabeth Strout herself, and perhaps for us all—that community is the thing that will help us get through to the end.
Perspective in The Dark
In John McGahern’s 1965 novel, the point-of-view changes from first-person to second person to third person to no point of view at all. As the point of view shifts, the narrator seems to be seeing himself through different lenses, just as he is redefining himself through his choices.
Reading Deesha Philyaw’s “Peach Cobbler”
In “Peach Cobbler,” Deesha Philyaw manages a long stretch of time by tracking her protagonist’s relationship to an object. Writing sensually about peach cobbler, Philyaw draws the reader into the story: we are there, smelling the peaches and sugar and cinnamon, as Olivia develops from a girl into a
The Physical and the Emotional in God’s Children Are Little Broken Things
The way that Arinze Ifeakandu chooses to depict a character’s world, seen through their eyes, also reflects their emotional landscape. It is a subtle and beautiful way to portray his characters, to allow us to truly understand how they feel.
Julie Otsuka’s Layered Points of View
Julie Otsuka’s new novel is divided into five chapters, three written in the first-person plural perspective and two in the second-person; the novel examines dementia, familial relationships, and the friction between the collective and the individual, using the shifts in point-of-view to marry form to content.
Sara Lippmann’s Turns in Jerks
Even though the characters in Sara Lippmann’s second story collection are often stuck in their lives, a sense of life, of possibility, of creation, runs throughout the book, uniting its stories as one. Lippmann focuses on the unexpected and on the surprising in order to focus on life.
The Search for Home in Away to Stay
Mary Kuryla’s debut is a coming-of-age novel, a story about a girl slowly finding her way—though in this case, the narrative is turned upside down: Olya finds a home rather than leaves one.
Love and Loss in You Never Get It Back
Cara Blue Adams skillfully deploys the direct address in her 2021 collection. The love and loss that is examined throughout is heightened by this craft choice; the narrative arc that is created through its use underscores the narrative arc of the collection and carries the reader through the book