…, Istvan returns to Decca and Rupert to stage a new show at the Poppy. His latest creation, a disturbing puppet named Pan Loudermilk, is “more accomplice than mere tool…this Pan seems to honor no limits, to see with his bright blue gaze whatever secrets one would most keep hidden.” With Pan and the rest of his intricate puppets, who he calls “les mecs,” Istvan strikes a match that soon has everyone—the players, the patrons, and the advancing army—…
Hello again, FWR friends. Welcome to the latest installment of our “First Looks” series, which highlights soon-to-be released books that have piqued my interest as a reader-who-writes. We publish “First Looks” here on the FWR blog around the 15th of each month, and as always, I’d love to hear your comments and your recommendations of forthcoming titles. Please drop me a line anytime: erika(at)fictionwritersreview(dot)com, and thanks in advance. I…
…n the craft of writing—invaluable resources for the practicing writer. His latest volume is There’s Something I Want You to Do: Stories, published this week by Pantheon. Interview: Ian Singleton: Thanks for granting my request to do this interview, Charlie. Let’s talk about requests, since that’s a theme in your new collection, There’s Something I Want You to Do. Each story has a moment when a character says, “There’s something I want you to do,”…
…is a good time to delve into some of the specifics of the content of your latest collection, some of what emerges as a pattern, before I come back to a couple questions about your craft. Is your latest book, fundamentally, a book about loss? I think of it as a book about love—but, of course, loss is inextricably part of love. Yes, love. But also, as you say in terms of loss and love, the pain of love. What is the book saying about the nature of f…
…n ghosts or not, you’ll find the past haunting the pages of Ana Menéndez’s latest collection of stories, Adios, Happy Homeland! In twenty-seven tales of interlinked prose we enter the mythical, magical world of Cuba. Characters take flight–literally and metaphorically–as they wrestle with issues of family, art, literature, and the need to run away from it all. It is a familiar Cuba, but Menéndez’s modern take challenges how we tell our stories. Me…
…raction. Almost every day we post new content on our blog—whether industry news, calls for submissions, news items, or general whimsy—and every three to five days we publish a new feature. So each day a reader visits the site, it feels as if there’s an ongoing conversation taking place. This is further underscored by the fact that readers can leave comments and questions and links to related material in response to the work itself. And if a partic…
…warily. A less tangible illness-at-ease pervades the stories of Rasskazy: New Fiction from a New Russia (Tin House, 2009), and it does so in a fashion atypical of characters firmly rooted in their homeland. We expect this discomfort in immigrant characters—their awkwardness, their failed mimicry of the natives’ dress and habits, their attempts to pass the time or get laid. The poignancy and entertainment value of the immigrants’ shortcomings are,…
…d desire into places where they can no longer contain the contents. In the new book, for example, I’ve got a kid with his grandparents in Jerusalem, and there all hell can break loose when his family conflict plays out against the backdrop of a much wilder setting than the one he’s left behind. But the conflict is still one that evolves in and out of his New Jersey state of being—I can’t imagine him coming from anywhere else. Do you ever research…
…sham book at this price, so what’s another penny? Loss leaders are nothing new in business. For example, fast food joints typically lose money on every burger they sell. But they make so much on soft drinks (which cost nothing to produce) that it’s worth the tradeoff. And in the book business this is not entirely new, either. In the deep-discounting price wars of the 1990s, when big box stores like Barnes & Noble and Borders were fighting for cust…
…lly didn’t get into the journal because my work wasn’t good enough. But I knew that they did a book contest. And I finally thought that my collection was in a good spot, that I had maybe not a good product, but a working product. And I was at first one of their finalists—they choose five. The end of March is when their contest ends, and they read like motherfuckers over April and May. And I think toward the middle of May is when they announced who…
