Category Archives: Uncategorized

It’s something of a truism that the Irish are masters of the short story, so no real surprise that this collection is fantastic. The first story sets you up beautifully for the rest: it’s about an artist whose sculpture of the Virgin Mary is smashed when it is learned that a woman posed nude forContinueContinue reading “The Untilled Field, George Moore”

I happened to go see The Banshees of Inisherin two days after I finished reading The Bell, and was struck by the thought that it succeeded in doing all the things that Murdoch had tried, but failed, to do in the novel. Both are works that combine an interest in realism, especially in character psychologyContinueContinue reading “The Banshees of Inisherin and The Bell, by Iris Murdoch”

I am told that there are quite a few novels that portray the pandemic, and the experience of lockdown, but I hadn’t read one yet (aside from the fleeting references in Ali Smith’s seasonal quartet), so it was a new experience for me. Way back in 2008, I was enthralled at how the movie CloverfieldContinueContinue reading “The Sentence, Louise Erdrich”

Reviews of Glory inevitably discuss it in relation to Orwell’s Animal Farm, eagerly engaging with the question of how the novel functions as a political allegory of Mugabe’s downfall. Predictably, I am far more interested in the various other formal experiments that Bulawayo engages in, many of which continue the kinds of things she doesContinueContinue reading “Glory, NoViolet Bulawayo”

I spied this book on a display at J. Michaels Books in Eugene, Oregon, and this is the thing about a really excellent indie bookstore: their overall stock was so well curated, and the displays so thoughtfully put together, that I wanted to buy everything, because I knew that humans with excellent taste had consciouslyContinueContinue reading “The Verifiers, Jane Pek”

Sex is fascinating. I love reading about it, and thinking about it, and I am especially fascinated by the way it is both extremely private and individualistic and also inevitably attached to a larger world of cultural and political norms and beliefs.* And this delightful little erotic picaresque is a wonderful example of exactly that.ContinueContinue reading “Weird Fucks, Lynne Tillman”

I read this with a group of women who mostly didn’t like it that much, but I actually quite enjoyed it, much more so than I’d expected. It’s a story about a girl’s field hockey team that turns to witchcraft to improve their game. Unsurprisingly, it’s more about the relationships between the characters and theContinueContinue reading “We Ride Upon Sticks, Quan Barry”

Another short one, but better than nothing, maybe? There’s a lot of debate these days about the difference between essay, auto-theory, various experimental modes, etc — I would put these squarely in the essay category, in the best version of the form: a text that draws on personal experience (and some literary readings) to meditateContinueContinue reading “On Not Knowing: How to Love and Other Essays, Emily Ogden”

A taut, quick, quasi thriller. You kind of know what’s coming, yet you’re continuously surprised. The narrator is in many ways cliché (a jealous husband pursuing an affair with a younger woman), and yet somehow compelling. A lot of reviewers on goodreads are like UGH this is why I don’t read books by MEN andContinueContinue reading “The Woman from Uruguay, by Pedro Mairal, tr. Jenny Croft”

I was jokingly thinking to myself that the only way you could get me to read history like this is to illustrate it, but actually, this was still a bit of a slog. And maybe that’s because the story isn’t told in as engaging a way as it could be. Humbolt’s story is pretty incredible,ContinueContinue reading “The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, Andrea Wulf, Lillian Melcher”