Fiction Archive
Review: YOU TOO CAN HAVE A BODY LIKE MINE by Alexandra Kleeman
YOU TOO CAN HAVE A BODY LIKE MINE Alexandra Kleeman Harper, August 2015 283 pp, $25.99 Buy hardcover | eBook | trade paperback | audio Seeming unmoored from both tangible responsibility and abstract constructs, like Mersualt in Camus’ The Stranger, “A”—the narrator of Alexandra Kleeman’s debut novel You Too
Review: Marcel Proust’s IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME: SWANN’S WAY – A Graphic Novel by Stéphane Heuet
IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME: SWANN’S WAY by Marcel Proust Adaptation & Drawings by Stéphane Heuet Translated by Arthur Goldhammer Liveright, English reprint ed. July 2015 240 pp, $26.95 Buy hardcover | eBook There are few challenges as alluringly counterintuitive as adapting Proust; attempts to do so have produced wildly varying
Review: JUVENTUD by Vanessa Blakeslee
Juventud Vanessa Blakeslee Curbside Splendor Publishing, October 2015 340 pp, $15.95 Buy paperback | eBook Blame radiates outward from the center of Vanessa Blakeslee’s new novel, Juventud, which begins in Santiago de Cali, Colombia, during the conflict between FARC and ELN in 1999. First-person narrator fifteen-year-old Mercedes Martinez blames
Review: THE STATE WE’RE IN: MAINE STORIES by Ann Beattie
THE STATE WE’RE IN: MAINE STORIES Ann Beattie Scribner, Aug 2015 224 pages $25 buy: hardcover | eBook Maine, for Ann Beattie in her new collection, is a state of life, and that is the beautiful trick of the title, The State We’re In: Maine Stories. It is both
The Fairytale Redux: On Patrick deWitt’s “Undermajordomo Minor”
The last thing the world needs is another reimagining of the fairy tale. It has been done from every angle: straightforward, post-modern, and (yawn) from the villain’s perspective. So it was with some wariness that I approached Patrick deWitt’s new novel, Undermajordomo Minor, a fairy tale of sorts that
Review: NOTHING LOOKS FAMILIAR by Shawn Syms
NOTHING LOOKS FAMILIAR Shawn Syms Arsenal Pulp Press Published in Canada September 2014; available elsewhere since May 2015 184 pages $15.95 Buy paperback | NOOK | Kindle Complex characters are damn hard to write. Perhaps this explains why contemporary fiction is full of characters designed to be relatable and easily digestible. These
Review: SWEET CARESS by William Boyd
Sweet Caress William Boyd Bloomsbury, September 15, 2015 449 pp, $28 Buy here Sweet Caress is the newest novel from the acclaimed William Boyd, author of notable works such as Any Human Heart and A Good Man in Africa. The novel centers on Amory Clay, one of the first
Review: MAYHEM: THREE LIVES OF A WOMAN by Elizabeth Harris
Mayhem: Three Lives of a Woman Elizabeth Harris Gival Press, October 2015 140 pp, $20 Pre-order here In the opening scene of this exquisite first novel by prizewinning short fiction writer Elizabeth Harris, a young farm wife in a black cloche hat and rummage sale dress climbs out of
Reading as Intoxicant, Part I: Neurochemical Qualities of the Modern Manic Page Peeler
Richard Wright once wrote that reading is like a drug. Countless other authors have written some variation of that same assertion. If you’ve ever found yourself crushed in a corner weeping like a crazy person because the end of your latest literary fixation was fast coming to a close,
Review: MR. AND MRS. DOCTOR by Julie Iromuanya
Mr. and Mrs. Doctor Julie Iromuanya Coffee House Press, 2015 288 pages Buy: book | eBook Job Ogbonnaya is a liar—or, depending on your taste, a dreamer. After his brother Samuel dies in the Biafran war, Job becomes the hope of his family. They send him to school in