Playful, surreal, and piercing, these stories each experiment with fairy tales. Campbell’s voice unifies the collection with a mastery of juxtaposition. There’s a theme of disperate parts. Things that are removed or rearranged or from different times or interpreted in multiple ways are drawn back together in these stories. You can almost feel these knots tightening, exacting both pain and whimsy. A great read to begin the year: a little curious, a little cutting, a little spellbound.
Louise Erdrich’s storytelling talent is simply massive. The concept of FUTURE HOME OF THE LIVING GOD is not a new one. (Preceded by THE HANDMAID’S TALE and other dystopian visions of a future state where childbearing is a tool of terror and the stakes on which social control rest, this novel takes its place among that company.) But here, that concept is merely the frame around a brilliant story that storms through the explosive tension between parents and children, the roles of faith and science during catastrophe, the ingenuity of communities to both protect and persecute. Above all, I think it’s an argument that both heaven and hell can manifest here on earth, through our bodies, our natural surroundings, our relationships, our social fabric, the very lowly ephemera of our lives… and that transitioning between them can happen as quickly and commonly as falling through thin ice to the water below. Moving forward, moving back: where are we going?
WAKE, SIREN: Gripping, fearless, violent, and uncompromising. Ovid’s Metamorphoses are ancient stories of mythological transformation, and the cost of those transformations (as anyone familiar with this work will know) is paid with the bodies and hearts of mortal women. These are not happy tales, but they never were. Nina MacLaughlin frees the victims of mythology to scream and rage in the context of our current time, released from their silence, come back to let us know they haven’t forgotten their much-sung fates, or who, in the end, was to blame. One of the most challenging and strong collections I’ve ever read.
I will listen to Margaret Atwood pontificate on anything and enjoy it thoroughly. This book is a lot of loosely related, widely meandering odds and ends, but: A. I adore Atwood and it’s a pleasure just to hear her humor and insight, even in fragments, and B. I still found plenty of thought-provoking snippets to highlight and return to.
This book is akin to being trapped at a diner booth with David as he tells you a thousand extremely random anecdotes about his life for hours on end, while a kindly friend interjects occassionally with clarifying facts. And that diner booth is exactly where I want to be. The uncompromising way Lynch devoted his life to art made him half madman and half patron saint. He was both and neither, but unquestionably a bright light mourned by many who understand the call to keep making things, however they might be received, because… we just have to. Also, the many photographs included from David’s personal collection are absolutely fantastic.
THE DEVILS is my first foray into Joe Abercrombie’s work, and I may be hooked. This novel is a genuine adventure, with a strong ensemble cast, an ever-morphing plot, gorgeous worldbuilding, and no easy solutions. It succeeds in delivering big fun while still letting darkness be darkness–a playground for the morally gray. The characters are all richly realized, deliciously despicable and endearing.
ESH Leighton’s debut novel JOURNEY MAN is both gritty and glittering, corporeal in detail and cosmic in consequence. Itself a kind of mythical place for every artist, NYC serves as a capable portal through which Leighton thrusts a world-weary protagonist we can all recognize ourselves in. This book is sexy, slick, and one hell of a ride!
It’s so interesting to read Virginia Woolf in the 21st century, especially as someone who was born in the 1980s. Woolf was also born in the ’80s… the 1880s… and reached adulthood at the dawn of a new century, a new era where the world’s social and technological changes seemed staggering and impossible to reverse. I feel a kinship with her; I’ve seen my own new century turn over into an unrecognizable present, and like Woolf, I believe that it has brought with it new ways of thinking and being that will require new expression to capture. The way Woolf re-imagined language to reflect a tempestuous and expansive inner world remains shocking and boundary-pushing, even today. I love how courageously extravagant, personal, and surreal her writing is, and while it seems like the central purpose of this work was largely self-serving, in the process she created something so entirely strange and resonant that there was no going back once this book entered the world. A person’s mind and heart can be so much more fluid and unpredictable than what fits inside the strict bounds of Victorian literature. With her modernist Orlando, Woolf gave one of the strongest, most enduring kicks to the walls. She wrote about identity and art with a stylistic confidence that, just like Orlando herself, remains ever-changing and vital as the centuries keep ticking by.
RED TEMPEST BROTHER is a satisfying conclusion to H.M. Long’s pirate fantasy trilogy. This installment takes us further out to sea, and further into the forces that govern, haunt, and disrupt the Winter Sea and beyond. Old friends (and enemies) return, ploys cross and double-cross, and Long’s expansive imagination is on full display with one of the most exciting examples of fantasy worldbuilding I’ve seen in a long time. This is a world and a “comfort read” trilogy I know I will long to return to.
THE SEA GIVES UP THE DEAD sings across the water with a startling voice, rich with haunted children, final chances, cursed dilemmas, and full-blooded enchantment. Molly Olguín’s stories feel very new and very old at the same time: delicate, deft, disruptive. Prepare to be sad. Also, prepare to be wowed.
