Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘Review’

Reviews |

The Little Giant of Aberdeen County, by Tiffany Baker

by Celeste Ng

Tiffany Baker’s debut novel, The Little Giant of Aberdeen County, contains an apparent contradiction in its title: a little giant? Truly Plaice, the character so dubbed, is no Paul Bunyan: she doesn’t tower over rooftops or create canyons with her feet. But she’s plenty big enough to cause a stir: at five, she’s two inches taller than her seven-year-old sister, and she just keeps growing bigger and heavier. So she becomes known as Aberdeen’s “little giant,” a position that shapes her fate. And that oxymoron encapsulates this whimsical novel, which is, at its heart, about the yoking together of opposites.


Shop Talk |

new review on FWR: The Nightingales of Troy by Alice Fulton

by Greg Schutz

a preview: The Nightingales of Troy is renowned poet and critic Alice Fulton’s fiction debut. In this collection, she displays a knack for the ineffable, for creating stories that are more than the sum of their intricately assembled parts. Her best stories not only exhibit her architectural prowess, they also remind the reader of the near-magical capaciousness of the story form. Click here to read the whole review by Greg Schutz.


Reviews |

Best Sex Writing 2009, by Rachel Kramer Bussel

by Laura Roberts

With her personal take on the best of sex writing from 2009 (or, rather, 2008; the title is a bit of a misnomer), Rachel Kramer Bussel notes that “You don’t have to look far to find sex, but you do have to get a bit bolder when looking for writing and thinking about sex that doesn’t play to the lowest common denominator.”


Reviews |

Little Bee, by Chris Cleave

by Lee Thomas

What an encore. Chris Cleave’s second novel, Little Bee, offers a series of intricately timed revelations. A teenage refugee from Nigeria carries one side of the narrative, a young British professional, the other. Through this split-screen, Cleave tackles the multiple perspectives inherent in any story: someone always stands outside looking in. Perspective equals character, which makes his use of multiple names so interesting…


Reviews |

Friendly Fire, by A.B. Yehoshua

by Gwen Glazer

A.B. Yehoshua never writes the shortcut phrase “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” in Friendly Fire, his most recent novel, newly translated into English from Hebrew. It’s as though the veteran Israeli author is mining a seam so deep that its boundaries do not need to be explored or examined, or picking up a thread of conversation that Israelis have already been engaged in for 60 years. That isn’t to say, however, that Yehoshua has no comment on the matter.


Reviews |

The First Person and Other Stories, by Ali Smith

by Celeste Ng

The dozen stories in The First Person, Ali Smith’s latest collection, are deceptively simple: no verbal pyrotechnics, no otherworldly setting, no last-minute epiphanies, and most of the time, no traditional rising action or climax. They’re told in a simple, conversational tone, often by a narrator who could be Ali Smith herself. But they stay with you long after you’ve finished reading them. They sneak up on you, camouflaged as innocuous little anecdotes about innocuous little interactions and misunderstandings, and only later do you realize they’re asking the most fundamental questions that fiction, or life itself, can ask.


Reviews |

A Better Angel, by Chris Adrian

by Brian Short

The stories in Chris Adrian’s third book (and first story collection) are idealistic, relentlessly imaginative and existentially harrowing—(Flannery O’Connor/Lorrie Moore) x Kafka=Chris Adrian. Using a unique mixture of shocking imagery and surprising tenderness, Adrian illuminates the pathologies of the trauma-battered, those stricken by grief or illness who choose to funnel their angst into healing or annihilating activities. The results are individual, startling, and luminous.


Reviews |

The Mayor's Tongue, by Nathaniel Rich

by Celeste Ng

Near the beginning of Nathaniel Rich’s debut novel, The Mayor’s Tongue, a young man named Eugene reads a novella by his idol, the legendary author Constance Eakins. “[It] was typical Eakins,” Eugene reflects, “a strange reality that bordered on fantasy, an exotic locale, larger-than-life characters.” He might have been describing The Mayor’s Tongue itself, a book so dizzyingly rich with surprises that no review could—or should—describe them all.


Reviews |

Driftless, by David Rhodes

by Gregory Parker

Driftless is David Rhodes’ first novel in 33 years and the sequel to his last published work, Rock Island Line. Unlike the earlier novel, whose epic narrative focused solely on drifter-cum-farmer July Montgomery, Driftless offers a series of vignettes featuring the many residents of Words, Wisconsin, as they tackle issues of powerlessness, tragedy, and belonging – timeless human questions – in philosophical and heroic ways. What John Gardner praised as “moral style” was evident in Rock Island Line, but it really comes into its own in Driftless.




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