Reviews
March 12, 2010
Unaccommodated Man: Robert Stone’s Fun With Problems 3
by Tatjana Soli
Robert Stone is like the friend who orders a round of stiff drinks, holds your hand, and looks into the abyss with you.
March 9, 2010
Send in the Drowned: Margriet de Moor’s The Storm 1
by Matthew Jakubowski
The Storm offers engaging historical details about the ocean’s power over Dutch life. There are demure sex scenes and macabre, watery deaths. Its bleakness – joy seems banal in this giddily dark book – is often thrilling. But the omniscient narration is choppy and unsteady.
February 23, 2010
Brooklyn Underdog: Hesh Kestin’s The Iron Will of Shoeshine Cats 5
by Emily St. John Mandel
Shoeshine Cats is admirable in part for its tinge of the improbable, its impossible suavité and secret rooms. Kestin catches us up in a gritty enchantment.
February 12, 2010
Photography Comes of Age: Street Seen 0
by Buzz Poole
More than a collection of captivating photographs, Street Seen establishes the foundation for how viewers learned to consider photography and notions of reality.
February 9, 2010
Reckless and Dangerous: Justin Taylor’s Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever 4
by Theodore Wheeler
Justin Taylor depicts a generation raised on video games and cable-news politics, a nation where alcohol abuse and sexual discord are the main rites of passage.
February 4, 2010
It’s All Right to Cry: Restoring Raymond Carver’s Voice 10
by Frank Kovarik
The conventional shorthand is that Gordon Lish’s versions are bracing and bleak, Carver’s verbose and sentimental. But, in a just world, Beginners would be published as a stand-alone volume to replace the shell that Lish made of it.
