(Penguin) Review by Brian Tanguay Discovering a new author is one of the unparalleled joys of reading. Like the box of chocolates made famous by Forrest Gump, one never knows…
Category: Fiction
Take What You Need by Idra Novey
Viking Review by Walter Cummins The words of Idra Novey’s title, Take What You Need, suggest a sign scrawled on a heap of broken, useless stuff not worth a payment.…
Dog on Fire by Terese Svoboda
Nebraska Review by Walter Cummins Terese Svoboda opens Dog on Fire with the narrator trapped in a blinding storm: “Out of a storm so thick with dust, a storm so…
MacLeish Sq. by Dennis Must
Red Hen Review by Jack Smith As with many of Dennis Must’s other fictions, consisting of three novels and three short story collections, MacLeish Sq. is a tale about personal…
Dangerous Blues by Stephen Policoff
Review by Lisa del Rosso In Stephen Policoff’s latest novel, the evocative Dangerous Blues, widower Paul Brickner, the not so much unreliable as increasingly unhinged narrator, is being haunted by…
The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
(Harper Perennial) Review by Brian Tanguay I’m not sure why it took me so long to read Louise Erdrich. I’ve seen her name on lists of best books in literary…
Dust Child by Nguyen Phan Que Mai
(Algonquin) Review by Jinny Webber Published in March 2023, Nguyen Phan Que Mai’s Dust Child marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Americans pulling out of Viet Nam. Seeing and hearing…
Victory City by Salman Rushdie
(Random House) Review by Walter Cummins In his latest novel, ironically titled Victory City, Salman Rushdie appears to have pulled out all stops on his inventive powers as he dramatizes…
Foster by Claire Keegan
(Grove) Review by Walter Cummins While reading Claire Keegan’s impeccable novella, I couldn’t help thinking of the old saw about stray animals that wander into your yard: if you name…
Liberation Day by George Saunders
(Random House) Review by Brian Tanguay If you read Tenth of December or Lincoln in the Bardo, you know that George Saunders isn’t afraid to challenge readers and make them…