Book Review: Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins

Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins

Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Claire Vaye Watkins has established herself as a writer to watch with her novel debut Gold Fame Citrus. I read this book as extreme devastation was ravishing California with wildfire, which feels dangerously close to the future Watkins offers here–the novel is set in a California scorched by extreme drought, fire, and an encroaching sea of sand. The writing is extraordinarily bold, and I admired it for that–it’s very free and very incisive all at once, and there are so many scenes that are just razor sharp. The social criticism here is definitely on point, though it’s truly devoid of hope. The more imperiled the environment becomes in Gold Fame Citrus, the more morally bankrupt its people, the more willing to believe in lies to preserve their own sense of comfort. This book, at its most basic level–even for all of Watkins’ play–is terrifying.



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Book Review: The Hatchet and the Hammer by Caitlin Scarano

The Hatchet and the Hammer by Caitlin Scarano

The Hatchet and the Hammer by Caitlin Scarano

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


How much of us is our body? How much of us is our history?

The Hatchet and the Hammer by Caitlin Scarano is here to reckon, defying genre, clear-eyed and standing two inches from those questions without flinching or ornament. Generations of trauma and violence, physical and imagined, threaten the speaker–but Scarano’s poetry dissects that threat in a way that peers into its origins, interrogates the idea of blame, is still standing at the end, and finishes with a roar.



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