Daniel Kehlmann translated by Carol Brown Janeway Pantheon ($21.95) by Eric Iannelli When Daniel Kehlmann—one of the few authors of the past decade for whom the label Wunderkind is apposite—was recently asked by the fawning host of the German literary discussion program Literaur im Foyer to single out his favorite compliment of all those he’s received, he said it […]
Scott Blackwood New Issues Poetry and Prose ($26) by Jaspar Lepak Winner of the 2007 AWP Award Series in the Novel, Scott Blackwood’s first novel, We Agreed to Meet Just Here, tells the story of a small Texas town and the mystery of the lives that intersect there. While these lives are close to each other […]
William Saroyan edited by William E. Justice Heyday Books ($24.95) by Ryder W. Miller One of the most famous and prolific writers of the 20th Century, William Saroyan (1908-1981) left behind famous stories, novels, and dramas, but he also wanted to tell his own tale in artful ways. For him art was an escape from […]
John Langan Prime Books ($24.95) by Charlie Broderick One of the most important factors of the horror story is atmosphere. For this reason one should wait to read John Langan’s Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters until the ripest moment of the day—dusk. Begin the ritual by locking the doors, checking under the bed, and starting a […]
Mark Budman Counterpoint Press ($24) by Bob Sommer Mark Budman’s My Life at First Try straddles the space between the short story cycle tradition of writers like Sherwood Anderson, James Joyce, and Ernest Hemingway, and the novel, with its essential unities of character and plot. Budman’s unique test of whether the short story can sustain a novel […]
Diane Glancy Excelsior Editions / SUNY Press ($14.95) by Emy Farley First came the colonizers, then came the priests. With each new wave of settlers to the New World arrived both opportunity and destruction; both harm and hope stepped ashore. The men who journeyed from Europe to North America believed they were doing God’s work […]
Claire Keegan Grove/Atlantic ($13) by Salvatore Ruggiero A pervasive melancholy rips through the hearts and minds of the characters in Claire Keegan’s Walk the Blue Fields. In sharp, sparing prose, the Irish author’s new collection of stories analyzes the faults and flaws of fathers and daughters, writers and brides, farmers and pastors—all of whom are stuck in […]
Jan Elizabeth Watson Tin House Books ($14) by Jaspar Lepak Asta in the Wings, Jan Elizabeth Watson’s debut novel, tells the remarkably imaginative and heartbreaking story of a seven-year-old girl and her first journey into the world outside her mother’s house. Through Asta’s eyes, every square inch of space is detailed and ripe with possibilities, […]
edited by Marco Sonzogni Vintage New Zealand by Linda Lappin Nearing the end of her brief life, Katherine Mansfield became obsessed with time. She was haunted by the thought of work undone, of leaving mere “snippets” to posterity. Writing for Mansfield was a second life, and, as she poignantly remarked in the final phases of […]
Ann Lauterbach Penguin ($18) by Michael D. Snediker Ann Lauterbach’s new collection, Or to Begin Again, ravishes in the geometrical, in geometry’s attempt to make sense of time. The circle, the sequence, the point, the angle, the line—such a vocabulary saturates this collection of poems, and compromises its sundry radii on pages already held by a […]