book reviews

Striving for Better in Jared Harel’s Let Our Bodies Change the Subject, Review by Emily Hockaday

The opening poem to Harél’s Let Our Bodies Change the Subject prepares the reader for what is to come—a meditation on mortality, the passing of the baton, generational knowledge, and existence itself. And somehow Harél faces these existential questions head-on, with care and grace. He casually introduces us to the “Sad Rollercoaster” the speaker’s daughter…

In Everything I See Your Hand by Naira Kuzmich Review by Carrel Barber

The Predestined Fiction of Naira Kuzmich:

There is an Armenian belief known as jagadakir which translates literally to “the writing on the forehead” and it is the idea that one’s destiny is predetermined and therefore for the world to see. This superstition lives in the protagonists of Naira Kuzmich’s short story collection titled In Everything I See…

Curing Season by Kristine Langley Mahler, Review by Ashley Espinoza

Curing Season is a lyrical essay, a segmented essay, and a hermit crab essay, all in one book. It is written in the container of a book but explores the various forms given to creative nonfiction. With essays like “Shadow Box” which is written in squares and rectangles to be contained in a shadow box,…

Woman with a Fan: On Maria Blanchard by Diane Kendig Review by Anne Whitehouse

Woman with a Fan is poet Diane Kendig’s historical inquiry and personal journey into the life and career of turn-of-the-century Spanish painter María Blanchard. Although Blanchard worked in Paris among the modernists, she was little celebrated in her lifetime, nearly forgotten after her death, and only recently rediscovered…

Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart Review by Ally Muterspaw

If you have read or ever heard of Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain, the recipient of the 2020 Booker Prize, or are familiar with the Scottish-American writer, then you might expect a specific set of social circumstances. Like Shuggie Bain, Stuart’s sophomore novel, Young Mungo, tells a story of systemic poverty, toxic masculinity, and gay/queer sexuality.…

The Ways We Get By by Joe Dornich Review by Edward Jackson

Joe Dornich’s collection of stories find the right balance of new weird and traditional short story form to draw in a wide range of readers. The nine stories have interwoven characters that remind us, as they veer just enough off the track, that we are indeed in a very strange world. Dornich’s characters find themselves…