AltWeeklies Wire
Jonathan Miles' Epistolary Debut Gets Buried Under the Weight of its Own Baggagenew
Ultimately, Dear American Airlines is only as redeemable as its protagonist, which is to say, not very.
The Texas Observer |
Emily DePrang |
07-24-2008 |
Fiction
In Catherine O’Flynn’s New Novel, Your Heart Breaks -- Eventuallynew
O'Flynn, author of What Was Lost, gives a pretty spot-on description of mall life. Green Oaks, the Birmingham shopping center detailed in the novel, is a nightmarish complex, and she gives an accurate insight on how suffocating it may be to work there long after you should have moved on.
Charleston City Paper |
Susan Cohen |
07-23-2008 |
Fiction
Stories about Stories: Kevin Brockmeier’s new story collection retells (relatively) new talesnew
Each of the 13 stories in The View from the Seventh Layer is some ingenius variation of narrative genre — there are four fables, a ghost story, an alien abduction story, a fantasy, a science-fiction romance, a situation comedy of sorts, and even a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure story.
Only a few of these breezy and sometimes elegant stories subscribe to that 20th-century dogma of short-story writing that Michael Chabon has called — in the tongue-and-cheek introduction to McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales — the “contemporary, quotidian, plotless, moment-of-truth revelatory story.”
Charleston City Paper |
John Stoehr |
07-23-2008 |
Fiction
Salman Rushdie Creates an Engrossing East-Meets-West Novelnew
The bridge between these two worlds is the enchantress of the book's title, an Indian princess so beautiful and beguiling, Rushdie keeps her from the reader for more than half of the book--as if we, too, could not bear the full power of her charms.
Weekly Alibi |
John Freeman |
07-22-2008 |
Fiction
'Stuff White People Like' Goes from Blog to Booknew
Something about SWPL already feels stale, as though the big thing missing on this list of 150 things, is #151, Stuff White People Like.
Montreal Mirror |
Juliet Waters |
07-11-2008 |
Fiction
Lewis Shiner's Novel of the Destruction of Haytinew
There are secrets upon secrets in Black & White, sins upon sins, but they all revolve around a single, penetrating absence: Hayti, the African-American community gutted by the construction of the Durham Freeway 40 years ago.
David Wroblewski Rewrites 'Hamlet' but with Puppiesnew
His debut novel, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle , tracks a young dog trainer as he tries to get up the nerve to murder his murderous uncle.
Willamette Week |
John Minervini |
07-09-2008 |
Fiction
City of Exiles: Learning to be American means finding oneself, even after 9/11new
Outlegged by news networks that never sleep, outsold by the juggernaut of visual entertainment, the novel doesn't bring us the news as it once did. Or at least it's easy to think so until you pick up a book like Joseph O'Neill's splendid Netherland.
Charleston City Paper |
John Freeman |
07-09-2008 |
Fiction
'After Hours at the Almost Home' Captures Wait-staff Dynamicsnew
From the crisscrossing, interconnected perspectives of haggard wage slaves, After Hours at the Almost Home documents a single late shift at a fictitious Denver bar.
Baltimore City Paper |
Raymond Cummings |
07-08-2008 |
Fiction
Every Word Counts in 'Girl Meets Boy'new
As part of a series called The Myths, Girl Meets Boy reworks the Iphis story handed down to us by Ovid in which a girl, brought up as a boy in an anti-female world, falls in love with a girl.
NOW Magazine |
Susan G. Cole |
07-07-2008 |
Fiction
B.S. Johnson's 'The Unfortunates' is Resurrectednew
In his unique 1969 narrative The Unfortunates (New Directions) finally published in May for the first time in the United States, Johnson pursued the question of how creating a novel that would not be bound by conventions might necessitate a book that would not even be bound between covers.
Los Angeles CityBeat |
Anthony Miller |
07-07-2008 |
Fiction
Chuck Palahniuk's Latest Novel is Undeniably Weirdnew
While Rant is less shocking than other Palahniuk novels, it contains a cabal of eccentrics and a zeal for the outrageous.
Jackson Free Press |
Lindsey Maddox |
07-03-2008 |
Fiction
David Sedaris Cranks Out an Airplane Readnew
When You Are Engulfed in Flames does feature flashes of that off-kilter Sedaris wit, but more often the stories here are quickly read and more quickly forgotten: entertaining enough, but easy to put away when the wheels hit the tarmac.
The Portland Mercury |
Alison Hallett |
07-03-2008 |
Fiction
Stephanie Kuehnert on Her Debut Novel, 'I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone'new
Everyone wants to be a rock star. Kuehnert’s protagonist and narrator, Emily Black, is no different. Living in a tiny town in Wisconsin, left alone with her father as an infant when her mother hit the road following her own rock-star dreams, Emily's now your favorite teenager, much cooler than you were when you were there, the dark hair, the red lipstick and the witty asides and retorts all part of the angst-ridden fireball.
Chicago Newcity |
Tom Lynch |
07-02-2008 |
Author Profiles & Interviews
Jack Pendarvis Debuts with 'Awesome' Absurditynew
Besides a smattering of high-end literary references, prepare in Awesome to be treated to life's lower end: multiple examples of buggery and flatulence.
The Memphis Flyer |
Leonard Gill |
06-27-2008 |
Fiction
