The Regal Lemon Tree by Juan José Saer (Open Letter, 2020) Though I’m less than certain about the world, and definitely not optimistic at all about this country, as far as I’m concerned the New Year couldn’t have started better. I spent it at a family celebration: three brothers-in-law, two of their . . .
Read More
Cherry by Nico Walker (Knopf, 2018) Last year the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the NIH declared that 130 people in the United States die after overdosing on opioids every day. Multiples more overdose and survive, as did the narrator of Cherry, a ferocious and exhilarating, typewritten-from-prison debut novel by Nico Walker. Told in . . .
Read More
Review of Gut Botany by Petra Kupper (Wayne State University Press, 2020) You might remember, when the pandemic began, animals’ intrusion on the suddenly vacant human landscapes. Goats roamed the streets of Llandudno, Wales. Monkeys searched for food in Lopburi, Thailand. A javelina sped through downtown Phoenix. It appeared that the natural world, which we had . . .
Read More
A Review of The World That Belongs To Us: An Anthology of Queer Poetry from South Asia, edited by Aditi Angiras and Akhil Katyal (Harper Collins, 2020) “They say This world isn’t for youWhy then was I born into it, if it wasn’t for me.” These lines hit you like a gust of unforgiving . . .
Read More
A review of Empires by John Balaban (Copper Canyon Press 2019) In a John Balaban poem, random acts of both kindness and destruction happen in profusion, but what they fall upon is never nameless. A resourceful diction—plus a wry, casual mastery of metaphor—nail the scene. From “Cibolero”: “the rain, dropping its dark curtains…” . . .
Read More
A Review of The Adventures of China Iron, by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, Translated by Fiona Mackintosh and Iona Macintyre (Charco Press, 2020) Back in February, the International Booker Prize, which recognizes the best novel translated into English published in the UK or Ireland, announced its longlist of novels competing for this year’s award. The . . .
Read More
A lager is a lager is a lager. Unless it’s a Lager+. And that’s what I deem the sixth beer in the Leaves of Grass tribute series from Bell’s Brewery: Salut au Monde! Bell’s dubs it an Unfiltered Rustic Lager, their version of a Kellerbier. Rustic and unfiltered can also describe the persona that Walt Whitman cultivated in “Salut au Monde!” . . .
Read More
A review of What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance and In the Lateness of the World by Carolyn Forché (Penguin 2019 and 2020) “I entered the small, mud-walled room, where she offered me a stool and a metal cup of water, smiling, her hair tied back, her eyes bathed in . . .
Read More
First, let’s get one thing straight. I’ve never set foot in a war zone. For the past two decades, actually a bit longer, I have spent a good deal of time in a former war zone, but that’s hardly the same. And the difference isn’t simply existential, it’s categorical, in the Kantian . . .
Read More
A review of We Were Promised Spotlights by Lindsay Sproul (Penguin Random House) Lindsay Sproul’s debut novel, We Were Promised Spotlights, will no doubt resonate with readers who are especially interested in LGBT coming-of-age stories, but what makes this book stand out is the quality of the prose, the well-drawn, complex characters, and the compelling . . .
Read More