Tag Archives: summer 2012

ON LEAVE: A Book of Anecdotes

Keith Tuma Salt Publishing ($14.95) by Stephen Burt What a bad title for such a good—and, paradoxically, ambitious—book: though it presents itself as a low-pressure journal, the inconsequential deeds and recollections of a senior professor in a sabbatical year, On Leave unfolds to reveal a meditation on the anecdote as a form; an elegant sketch of grief, […]

WILDWOOD

The Wildwood Chronicles, Book I Colin Meloy illustrated by Carson Ellis Balzer + Bray ($17.99) by Steve Bramucci Wildwood tells the story of Prue McKeel, a fiercely independent twelve-year-old living in the St. Johns neighborhood of Portland, Oregon. Early in the book, Prue’s younger brother, Mac, is abducted by a murder of crows and carried into […]

VANISHING ACTS

A Tragedy Forrest Hylton City Works Press ($12.95) by Kristin Thiel People often read to escape, but Forrest Hylton’s first book-length fiction reminds us how grounded we usually remain. Most books are written in one language, regardless of how many languages the characters speak, how far around the universe they themselves travel.Vanishing Acts is written in […]

THIRST

Andrei Gelasimov translated by Marian Schwartz AmazonCrossing ($14.95) by Amy Henry “I’m sorry to bother you again,” she said. “My Nikita’s acting up. Please help me out this once. I can’t cope with him by myself.” . . . The little guy shuddered and stared at me as if I were a ghost. He actually […]

MONSTRESS

Lysley Tenorio Ecco ($13.99) by Robert Martin The debate has been long, and inconclusive, and in many ways irrelevant: are MFA programs good for writing, or are they ruining American fiction? One thing is certain: regardless of whether the quality of letters suffers under the current academic model, it hasn’t kept writers away from graduate […]

THE CORRESPONDENCE OF FRADIQUE MENDES

José Maria de Eça de Queirós translated by Gregory Rabassa Tagus Press / UMass Dartmouth ($19.95) by Douglas Messerli Fradique Mendes, originally conceived as a Pessoa-like heteronym, was created by the great Portuguese writer José Maria Eça de Queirós and two friends in 1869 as a way to poke fun at their fellow countrymen. The […]

CALL ME WHEN YOU LAND

Michael Schiavone The Permanent Press ($28) by Soo Young Lee At the heart of Michael Schiavone’s debut novel Call Me When You Land is a fractured family pulsating with quiet desperation. Single mother Katie Olmstead receives the news that her estranged ex-husband Craig, father to her teenage son C.J., has died of a heart attack and left […]

VARAMO

César Aira translated by Chris Andrews New Directions ($12.95) by Douglas Messerli An insignificant Panamanian government employee named Varamo is paid his monthly salary, one day in 1923, in counterfeit money—money he recognizes as being false the moment it is placed into his hands. This law-abiding and fearful citizen of Colón, accordingly, is faced with […]

WE MAKE MUD

Peter Markus Dzanc Books ($16) by Nick Ripatrazone Recursivity in prose was a favorite trick of American postmodernists, with Donald Barthelme, John Barth, and William Gass all spinning particular variations. While interviewing Gass in 1998 for Bookworm, Michael Silverblatt claimed Gass’s proclivities toward heightened and mannered language were ultimately grounded by a focus on place: […]