A bookish fifteen-year-old breaches taboos in the small New England town of Wick. Poet Rebecca Wolff’s masterful first novel is an Appalachian folk ballad rendered gothic–full of sex and ghosts, mixing caution and temptation, obsessed with origins but somehow timeless.

The appeal of Jo Ann Beard’s coming-of-age novel In Zanesville transcends both age and gender.

Sharon Harrigan on the peril of reading George Saunders. Among them, the inability to leave home without encountering Saundersian absurdities.

An Unfinished Score
by Elise Blackwell
Unbridled Books, April 2010
256 pp
Concert violist Suzanne Sullivan is preparing dinner when she hears on the radio that her long-term lover Alex—a well-known conductor—has perished in a plane crash. Living with her husband (a composer), her best friend Pertra (a concert violinist) and Petra’s deaf daughter Adele, Suzanne is forced to [...]

Reviewlets give FWR contributors the chance to recommend books of all genres that other fiction writers might enjoy. Reviewlet Rewinds like this one highlight books published more than two years ago, and Reviewlet Classics refer to books published more than twenty years ago.
At first I was not so sure about She Got Up Off the [...]

Reviewlets give FWR contributors the chance to recommend books of all genres that other fiction writers might enjoy. Reviewlet Rewinds (like this one) highlight books published more than two years ago, and Reviewlet Classics refer to books published more than twenty years ago.
You know that moment in life when you realize that stories of the [...]

In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that I love Gillian Sze. Not in a “we’re romantically involved” kind of way, but yes, we were classmates at Concordia University for our undergraduate degrees in Creative Writing, and from the first moment I read her work, I knew she was a great writer. So [...]

How Far is the Ocean from Here, Amy Shearn’s captivating debut, follows a young surrogate mother who flees to the desert shortly before her due date.
Accomplishing a seemingly impossible goal, the novel sustains the quality and language of a short story for 320 pages. Shearn exceeds at painting characters and relationships – particularly the bond [...]

Once there was a city where everyone had the gift of song.
Once there was a city where people did not look one another in the eye.
Once there was a man who happened to buy God’s overcoat.
The View from the Seventh Layer is a rich, ethereal collection: here are fables, ghost stories, romances (among them a [...]

At the FGIBI party, I had the chance to meet Jami Attenberg, whose novel-in-stories Instant Love I recently read and admired.
Instant Love follows an ensemble of vivid characters whose lives intersect as they stumble upon, after, or away from romance. Whether the passion in question is fleeting or fundamental, each story sharpens to a fine [...]