Suspend Your Disbelief

Recent Posts

Interviews |

Interview with Travis Holland, The Archivist’s Story

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Travis Holland’s first novel, The Archivist’s Story (2007, Dial Press), is set in Stalinist Russia in 1939. The book has been translated into eleven languages and has received numerous accolades, including: a Guardian Readers’ Pick of 2007, a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, a Best Fiction of 2007 choice by Metro.co.uk, a Best Book of 2007 by both the Financial Times and Publisher’s Weekly, and the 2008 VCU Cabell First novelist award. He currently lives in Ann Arbor, where he is at work on his next novel. Jeremiah Chamberlin spoke with him for FWR on December 18, 2008.


Shop Talk |

Newbery skirmish

by Anne Stameshkin

Earlier this fall, School Library Journal published an article called “Has the Newbery Lost Its Way?”, sparking a heated debate about criteria for what has long been recognized as the most prestigious prize in children’s literature. Are the latest Newbery medal-winning books really too “inaccessible” for kids? Should accessibility and popularity be issues in determining a winner? Are popularity and quality mutually exclusive? Does the Newbery tend to favor “good” books over “great” ones? What responsibility does the award have to young readers? What do you think?


Shop Talk |

How Fiction Works Discussion Review: Fiction and Social Change

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Fiction can change the world. Now that I’ve dropped that lead balloon on my foot, allow me to leave it there temporarily as penance for not only opening with such a clichéd adage, but also a self-aggrandizing one. Worse yet, I believe it. Deeply. Despite how hackneyed a statement, fiction has the potential to change our world. Perhaps not always in the same way as clean drinking water or penicillin, but alter our lives it can. And powerfully so. James Wood touches on this phenomenon in his essay-chapter “Sympathy and Complexity.” He opens with an anecdote about a Mexican police […]


Reviews |

Dream City, by Brendan Short

by Brian Short

Brendan Short’s debut novel tells the story of Michael Halligan, a nervous child who, in 1930s Chicago, finds solace in the Sunday adventure comics, where pulp heroes like Dick Tracy and the Shadow bring down the bad guys. As Michael grows up, his obsession with the Big Little Books makes human connection difficult, eventually trapping him inside his collectibles shop.


Reviews |

Between Here and April, by Deborah Copaken Kogan

by Lauren Hall

Bestselling memoirist Deborah Copaken Kogan (Shutterbabe) pens a haunting literary murder mystery; Between Here and April is the story of Elizabeth Burns, a former journalist turned urban mom, who goes looking for answers about the disappearance of a childhood friend and winds up tangled in questions she hoped never to answer.


Shop Talk |

How Fiction Works Discussion Review: "Realism" in Fiction

by Natalie Bakopoulos

The chapter/essay of How Fiction Works I found most intriguing was the last one: “Truth, Convention, and Realism”; the issues touched on within could easily be the subject of an entire book. What I find the most perplexing is coming to a definition of “realism” in the first place. Is realism truth? Mimesis? Traditional narration? Wood begins the section by citing the novelist Rick Moody, who says that contemporary literature has become dull and needs “a kick in the ass”; his disapproval seems to be aimed more at structure and style than content. Yes, sometimes a novel’s conflict-climax-resolution check mark […]




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