Reviews
March 3, 2011
From Sink Hole to Surface: Belle Boggs’ Mattaponi Queen 1
by Adam Gallari
In Mattaponi Queen gallows humor proves necessary, and often one is unclear whether the light at the end of the tunnel signals the brilliance of the sun or a rapidly approaching train.
February 28, 2011
James M. Cain’s Serenade: Fate and Blindness 11
by Emily Colette Wilkinson
Maybe it’s just that I’m a sucker for Cain’s fast, lean, hit-the-ground-running story-telling — talk as straight and sharp as a machete blade and twice as likely to leave you sore, since Noir heroes never end well–but it’s also that the Noir hero sees so much, narrates and describes what he sees so meticulously, and yet fails to see the destruction that awaits him.
February 25, 2011
The Trouble Starts Early: Marcy Dermansky’s Bad Marie 1
by Theodore Wheeler
Marie is the guilty pleasure personified, a trickster set loose on bourgeois morality and tact.
February 22, 2011
Rats, Pigs, Foxes, and Eagles: T.C. Boyle’s When the Killing’s Done 4
by Mary Pols
Reporting out on California’s Channel Islands, you could count on a day of freedom from yet another editorial whipping. Even more alluring, you could imagine all the histories that might have been.
February 22, 2011
Mold, Gin, and the Apocalypse: Lars Iyer’s Spurious 1
by Emily St. John Mandel
I feel some kinship with Lars, the narrator of Lars Iyer’s Spurious, a debut novel and a meditation on friendship, failure, the apocalypse, messianism, and mold.
February 18, 2011
“I Wanna Be Like You” Benjamin Hale’s The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore 2
by Jessica Freeman-Slade
Who gets to be human? To what end evolution? What do education, language, sophistication portend? Can an animal learn emotional maturity the way they learn circus tricks? What aspects of humanity can—and cannot—be taught?
