REVIEW: Bark On by Mason Boyles
byNovel. 363 pgs. Driftwood Press. February 2023. 978-1-949065-18-3. Submit, submit, submit to the cadences, the novel told me, to the neologisms that open up new perspectives on character and action,…
Reviews
REVIEW: Kneel Said the Night by Margo Berdeshevsky
byHybrid. 130 pgs. Sundress Publications. November 2022. 9781951979423. From its gorgeous cover to its final author’s note (fittingly circling back to the epigraph from Zora Neale Hurston, “No hour is…
REVIEW: The Anchored World by Jasmine Sawers
byFlash Fiction. 78 pgs. Rose Metal Press. October 2022. 978-1-941628-27-0. In an author’s note at the end of The Anchored World, Jasmine Sawers explains her love of fairy tales—both Western…
REVIEW: Begat Who Begat Who Begat by Marcus Pactor
byShort Fiction. 116 pgs. Astrophil Press. November 2021. 9780998019963. A text is a text and we’d be best to remember that. Words mean something. They are weapons. It’s our responsibility…
REVIEW: Teenager by Bud Smith
byFiction. 400 pgs. Vintage. May 2022. 9780593315224. What if Albert Camus wrote The Stranger in the mid-2000s but wanted the humming engine of it all to be the absurdity of…
REVIEW: People Want to Live by Farah Ali
byShort Fiction. 222 pgs. McSweeney’s. October 2021. 9781952119293. As international news coverage paints its own picture of Pakistan filled with political unrest, author Farah Ali honors her homeland by stepping…
REVIEW: True Fiction by Sohrab Homi Fracis
byShort Fiction. 96 pgs. Texas A&M University Press. October 2022. 978-1-62288-932-7. Disclaimer: The opening story of True Fiction appears in our book 15 Views of Jacksonville and the manuscript was…
REVIEW: Year of the Buffalo by Aaron Burch
byNovel. 190 pgs. American Buffalo Books. November 2022. 9780578394015. We’re wrestling. We’re listing to CDs. We’re building a fence. Sorry, Fence. We’re raising Billy. Year of the Buffalo is a…
REVIEW: Baby is a Thing Best Whispered by Keely O’Shaughnessy
byFlash Fiction. 79 pgs. Alien Buddha Press. August 2022. 9798844456459. In her flash fiction collection Baby is a Thing Best Whispered (Alien Buddha Press), author Keely O’Shaughnessy assembles a series…
REVIEW: Slight Return by Rebecca Wolf
byPoetry. 116 pgs. Wave Books. October 2022. 9781950268658. Rebecca Wolff’s stunning new collection, Slight Return, (forthcoming from Wave Books), attacks culture with a sharp knife of fragmented lines and lucid…