Book Reviews Archive
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
In her new memoir, Machado tells a story of abuse that often goes unrecognized, exploring what happens when we don’t have ready narrative models for our experiences.
The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada
Oyamada’s new novel is a tale of inaction rather than revolt, a story about the warm, velvety embrace of production models. Her characters seem exemplars of a particularly post-millennial brand of jaded helplessness, one that’s the result of living lives in the shadow of exploitative labor systems so all-encompassing
Last of Her Name by Mimi Lok
In Mimi Lok’s debut story collection, the characters are linked in their sense of displacement and isolation, both connected to and separate from their families and their shared histories.
Girl by Edna O’Brien
Edna O’Brien performs a sort of tight-rope act, strung between the stream-like nature of her prose and the painful shards of her story. Brutality stomps through the pages of her new novel, astonishing in its recurrence and terrifying in the variable justifications that underpin it.
The Collector of Leftover Souls by Eliane Brum
Eliane Brum’s journalism is a challenge to those of us living lives of comfort and privilege. Our task is to be the reporter she strives to be: one who mostly listens.
Rerun Era by Joanna Howard
In her new memoir, Joanna Howard questions a world where suffering is only acceptable when it is entertaining, when it is something people can watch again and again.
Love and I by Fanny Howe
In the wilds of associations that Howe’s poems produce, readers are sure to find both niches of rest and, simultaneously, calls to action.
The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Coates’ debut novel builds stories within stories, revisiting pre-Civil War America through the eyes of a survivor of the slave trade.
Breathe: A Letter to My Sons by Imani Perry
Perry, in the legacy of James Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Kiese Laymon, employs the epistolary form to craft an intimate meditation on the fears, hopes, and responsibilities of raising two Black boys in America.
SoundMachine by Rachel Zucker
In her new book, Rachel Zucker questions if her family is a distraction from her poetry, or if her poetry is a distraction from her family.