Reviews
November 24, 2009
The Death of the Absurd? 27
by James Kaelan
Laura van den Berg’s debut collection manages to establish an equilibrium between concept and poignancy. It doesn’t appear she trained to be a realist, but she may end up a champion of the movement.
November 20, 2009
Storytelling: Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals 14
by Arielle Bernstein
Eating Animals is a sensitive and brave book and as such will always be met by certain criticisms reserved for things which are sensitive and brave.
November 18, 2009
A Crazy Trolley to Nowhere and Back Again: Gert Jonke’s The System of Vienna 3
by John Madera
The System of Vienna is musical, innovative, and difficult, not in a dusty academic way, but as a delightful puzzle, as a well-constructed argument, as a challenging game of chess.
November 18, 2009
Deficits and Gifts: Anne Finger’s Call Me Ahab 2
by Amy Halloran
Finger delivers stories told from the vantage of Hellen Keller, Captain Ahab, Vincent Van Gogh, and characters, real or fictional, casting or recasting them as disability icons.
October 30, 2009
Sergei Dovlatov, Funny Families, and That Tall Brown Fence 8
by Sonya Chung
The New Yorker published nine of Dovlatov’s stories between 1981 and 1989. Why is he so little known or read in the West today?
October 27, 2009
Diamond Dust: Roberto Bolaño’s The Skating Rink 2
by Erik Maza
In The Skating Rink, Bolaño is more interested in pushing the boundaries of genre fiction than solving the crime.
