AltWeeklies Wire
Fortunately, Peter Hedges Decided Against Writing A 'Serious' Booknew
Peter Hedges’ novel The Heights is crying to be filmed. I assume it will be and I recommend everyone read it before you’re forced to buy a copy with a stupid movie tie-in cover.
New Haven Advocate |
Eva Geertz |
03-16-2010 |
Fiction
Tags: The Heights, Peter Hedges
John Wray Steps Up His Gamenew
Most coverage of the press around underground poster boy John Wray paints the 37 year-old as a roguish, self-indulgent author. The unorthodox approach he takes to promotion provides his books with talking points beyond their literary laurels.
New York Press |
Dale W. Eisinger |
03-11-2010 |
Fiction
Financial Collapse Plus War Plus Suicide Plus Closeted Men Equals OK Novelnew
Finished in September 2008, the very week that Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy, Union Atlantic offers a lucid perspective on the manner in which the greed and venality of a privileged few can drive the economy toward and beyond the brink of collapse.
San Antonio Current |
Justin Isenhart |
02-24-2010 |
Fiction
Thomas Mullen Breathes Life into 'The Firefly Brothers'new
"It all began when they died." So begins The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers, Decatur resident Thomas Mullen's new book about a pair of Depression-era bank robbers who have a little problem with dying.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Wyatt Williams |
02-09-2010 |
Fiction
'The Amazing Absorbing Boy': Trinidad to T.O.new
When his mother dies, comic-book-obsessed Sammy leaves Trinidad to live with his strangely distant dad in Regent Park. Everything about his new city fascinates the teenager, and he dives into his experience with eyes and ears wide open.
NOW Magazine |
Susan G. Cole |
02-05-2010 |
Fiction
Wells Tower's 'Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned': Short Stories to Pillage Bynew
There’s a great moment in Retreat, a new short story by Wells Tower. Two brothers have been out deer hunting on a chilly island in Maine. They haven’t bagged anything, and they’re wet and cranky. But just as they’re packing up for the day, one spies an enormous moose.
Willamette Week |
John Minervini |
02-03-2010 |
Fiction
T.C. Boyle, Still Goading the Opinionated After All These Yearsnew
A new collection of stories is something to get excited about. My appetite for Wild Child was whetted reading A Death in Kitchawank, in a recent New Yorker. I know that I plan to spend a few hours as a happy subject of literary manipulation, as soon as I lay hands on Boyle's latest.
New Haven Advocate |
Eva Geertz |
02-02-2010 |
Fiction
Jamie Iredell Bends His Prose Poems Into a Novelistic Arcnew
The narrator of Jamie Iredell's Prose. Poems. A Novel. is named Larry, but no one ever calls him that. His co-worker Sharon calls him a "fucking son of a bitch" – a more fitting moniker despite its lack of brevity.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Wyatt Williams |
01-19-2010 |
Fiction
Amy Bloom's (Mostly) New Stories Look for What Matters Mostnew
Amy Bloom's new collection is a revelation of the emotional violence and loss within friendship and complicated love. Many writers would do well to heed Bloom, who can compound the very essence of a relationship in a single phrase.
New Haven Advocate |
Nora Nahid Khan |
01-19-2010 |
Fiction
Joshua Ferris’ Second Novel Has Legs and Knows How to Use Themnew
Whereas Illinois native Joshua Ferris, author of the award-winning debut novel Then We Came to the End, voluntarily relocated to New York, the protagonist of his thoughtful and unsettling second novel, The Unnamed, finds that a force beyond his control governs his physical movement.
New York Press |
Rayyan Al-Shawaf |
01-14-2010 |
Fiction
Accessibility's Rainbow: Thomas Pynchon's 'Inherent Vice'new
A mere three years after the infamously reclusive author released Against the Day, a 1,000-plus-page world’s fair of themes, characters and pastiched genres, Pynchon may have thrown us his strangest curveball yet by delivering a novel that is accessible, readable, and relatively short: that is, rather un-Pynchonesque.
Tags: Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon
Jayne Anne Phillips Summons Faulkner in 'Lark & Termite'new
On July 26, 1950, Corp. Robert Leavitt is leading a frenzied retreat in rural Korea. On July 26, 1959, his orphaned son Termite is sitting under a tree in West Virginia waiting for a rainstorm. Inside the house, Termite's half-sister Lark is baking him a birthday cake.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Wyatt Williams |
01-12-2010 |
Fiction
Neil Gaiman Still Writes in the Shadow of His Masterpiecenew
Neil Gaiman's output equals only the tiniest fraction of the Disney corporate empire but he's a staggeringly prolific and eclectic creator. In the past 15 years, he's shifted his creative focus away from comics to other forms, including novels, kid-friendly picture books and high-profile screenplays.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Curt Holman |
01-12-2010 |
Fiction
Tags: The Graveyard Book, neil gaiman
Poppy Z. Brite's 'Second Line'new
When Poppy Z. Brite put aside her popular vampire stories, she wasn't looking to enter a new genre, partially because she only had plans for one novel, but also because, she says, the only food fiction on radar is a subgenre of mysteries set in the culinary world.
Tags: Second Line, Poppy Z. Brite
In Matthew Flaming's Debut, the Secret, Sordid Origins of... Toledo?new
Life before the internal combustion engine was no damn fun. That, along with a vague sense of disquiet, is the thrust of The Kingdom of Ohio (Amy Einhorn Books, 322 pages, $24.95), the debut novel of Matthew Flaming, who lives either in Brooklyn or Portland.
Willamette Week |
Ben Waterhouse |
12-30-2009 |
Fiction
