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.
Bulgarian-American author Miroslav Penkov’s debut short story collection East of the West (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) comes at a time when his native country’s literary star is on the rise in the west. In this auspicious moment, Penkov delivers a heck of a book.
The appeal of Jo Ann Beard’s coming-of-age novel In Zanesville transcends both age and gender.
Michael Rudin presents Hobart, our latest Journal of the Week. The journal’s ability to curate badass, cutting-edge narratives has helped this modest upstart grow out of Founding Editor Aaron Burch’s bedroom into a full-on web/print literary journal and publisher.
Sharon Harrigan on the peril of reading George Saunders. Among them, the inability to leave home without encountering Saundersian absurdities.
Germany’s literary superstar Günter Grass is obsessed with the past. His second memoir, The Box, challenges readers to distinguish between fact and fiction in latter half of the author’s life. His unconventional approach might undermine the memoir form, but the result is a compelling account of Grass’ compulsion to write.
Reading Kathe Koja’s latest novel is akin to spending an evening in a Victorian-era opium den designed by Tim Burton and hosted by Baz Luhrmann. Magic, opium, and…puppets…await.
In The Cat’s Table, Ondaatje returns to Sri Lanka as the story follows three boys who, along with a cast of eccentrics, make their way from Colombo to England. By turns adventurous, mysterious, and wistful, the novel traces the search for belonging amidst strangers and strange lands. Charlotte Boulay considers Ondaatje’s latest beautiful offering in the context of his larger body of work.
Shawn Mitchell gets under the hood of Pinckney Benedict’s Miracle Boy and Other Stories to see how the author manages to pack an apocalypse into each story. In his newest book, Benedict revisits his Appalachian heritage and peoples it with mythological bulls, dogs, mudmen, and robots.
Bonnie Jo Campbell’s charisma is formidable, and her energy infectious. This same energy can be found in the churning rivers and restless characters of her new novel, the follow-up to Campbell’s acclaimed story collection American Salvage. The protagonist of Once Upon a River is Margo Crane, a teenager who has grown up along the fictional Stark River, obeying its currents and snooping for its secrets.
Alissa Nutting has “story” written in ink on every page of Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls, her lively, well-imagined, and jaw-droppingly smart prize-winning debut. Imagine Donald Barthelme writing smart feminine narratives, Mary Gaitskill sans the kinky sex, or Margaret Atwood turning to dry, Colbert-style humor, and you may start to get an idea of what to expect.
Andrew Wingfield’s short story collection examines how suburban sprawl in a neighborhood outside of Washington, D.C. impacts its inhabitants, both human and animal. Residents new and old must navigate rapid economic and social change in the face of American politics.
