The Dark and Other Love Stories, by Deborah Willis
by Emily Nagin
“It’s rare to read a book that’s right nearly all the way through”: Emily Nagin on Deborah Willis’s new collection, The Dark and Other Love Stories.
“It’s rare to read a book that’s right nearly all the way through”: Emily Nagin on Deborah Willis’s new collection, The Dark and Other Love Stories.
“Always Happy Hour combines all the addictive ingredients of a pop song with a self-awareness and emotional insight that is both searing and deeply sympathetic”: Emily Nagin on Mary Miller’s latest collection.
“Any adult who has spent significant time with young people knows these feelings—the loss of a childhood self, the urge to save a teenager from your own mistakes. We Show What We Have Learned is full of these moments of doubling and their accompanying ache.”
“While Pendarvis acknowledges that it’s tragic to dream big about lost causes, his work also insists that doomed dreams are human and, while they still seem possible, necessary to our survival.”
“Her stories know so much about the world—the small ways we betray the people we love and the horrors that are so outsized they’d be absurd if they weren’t crushing—yet Beasts & Children is never cynical or defeatist.”
