Brandon Taylor revisits the world of young people in academic settings struggling to keep it together while fracturing internally in his sophomore effort, the short fiction collection, Filthy Animals. Lionel, who appears in five of the eleven stories in this collection, somewhat resembles Wallace, the protagonist from Taylor’s debut novel, Real Life. Both are black… Continue reading Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor
Author: jecrandall44
The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen
There are perhaps few Danish writers with such a prolific career as the poet and writer Tove Ditlevsen (1917-76), who published eleven poetry collections, seven novels, and four short fiction collections. Just this year her incredible trio of memoirs, The Copenhagen Trilogy, initially published separately through the 1960s and early 70s, has been translated into… Continue reading The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
Listeners of Japanese Breakfast, the musical project of Michelle Zauner, will not be surprised that this lyrically gifted and creative artist has now also dipped her feet into the literary space. Zauner’s memoir, Crying in H Mart, is a grief memoir in the style of Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, but with Korean… Continue reading Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Maríana Enriquez
Maríana Enriquez’s story collection, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, published in Argentina in 2009 but translated into English in 2020, leans into the macabre and imbues the horror genre with cultural specificity. Most of the stories are set in or around Buenos Aires, and many involve both spiritual phenomenon like local folklore and Afro-Brazilian… Continue reading The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Maríana Enriquez
What Comes After by Joanne Tompkins
What happens when teenagers keep dark secrets from their loved ones? Will this repression of the truth lead to a violent blow up? What Comes After, the debut novel by Joanne Tompkins, is a story that unfolds from these two questions. The story begins with a shocking murder suicide of two high school students in… Continue reading What Comes After by Joanne Tompkins
The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen
In his new novel, The Committed, novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen returns to his nameless narrator from his 2015 Pulitzer prize-winning novel, The Sympathizer. Fresh from his adventures abroad as a Viet Cong spy, our narrator is now going by the name Vo Danh (“Nameless”), and has travelled to Paris from Indonesia with his blood brother,… Continue reading The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen
No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
Patricia Lockwood burst onto the scene with her bestselling memoir Priestdaddy, a humorous and raunchy reflection on growing up in a very unique family with a Catholic priest for a father. This year she released her sophomore effort, No One is Talking About This, a novel that explores the inner life of a woman obsessed… Continue reading No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
Milk Blood Heat by Dantiel W. Moniz
Dantiel W. Moniz’s debut story collection Milk Blood Heat is the rare debut the strikes a perfect note with every story, all of which coalesce to an elemental and stunning symphony. The stories mostly center around black women and girls living in the Jacksonville area, and many stories integrate the three title images of milk,… Continue reading Milk Blood Heat by Dantiel W. Moniz
Milk Fed by Melissa Broder
Melissa Broder’s Milk Fed is an ambitious exploration of desire in all its forms. We meet our narrator, Rachel, in a state of intense repression. She has restricted her eating to the barest minimum, i.e. salads without dressing, small yogurts, etc., while also working out obsessively, in an attempt to burn all of the calories… Continue reading Milk Fed by Melissa Broder
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
Transcendent Kingdom is the second novel by Yaa Gyasi, who burst onto the scene a couple of years ago with her brilliant and celebrated historical fiction novel, Homegoing, which followed several generations of a Ghanian family experiencing slavery in Europe and America. Gyaasi’s sophomore novel has a narrower focus than Homegoing, which spanned decades and… Continue reading Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi