Fiction Reviews

Cleaver reviewers present the most exciting literary work from around the globe. We specialize in American independent press releases but also vital work in translation that’s all too often overlooked by American readers.

THE MEMORY OF ANIMALS, a novel by Claire Fuller, reviewed by Coralie Loon

THE MEMORY OF ANIMALS, a novel by Claire Fuller, reviewed by Coralie Loon

fiction reviews, reviews /

THE MEMORY OF ANIMALS, a novel by Claire Fuller, reviewed by Coralie LoonA Novel by Claire Fuller, reviewed by Coralie Loon
THE MEMORY OF ANIMALS (Tin House Books)

We’re all familiar with the sense of exhaustion and collective grief that seeped into our bones during the COVID-19 pandemic. Even though the pandemic is still not over, we have been able to recover and continue with gratitude for the things that went right: a successful vaccine campaign, virtual attempts to connect to one another, and eventually, a return to normalcy. Once the metaphorical gates opened, I swore I would never consume another piece of fiction that had anything to do with a deadly pandemic ...
CALL UP THE WATERS, Stories by Amber Caron, reviewed by Char Dreyer

CALL UP THE WATERS, Stories by Amber Caron, reviewed by Char Dreyer

fiction reviews, reviews /

CALL UP THE WATERS, Stories by Amber Caron, reviewed by Char DreyerA Short Story Collection by Amber Caron, reviewed by Char Dreyer
CALL UP THE WATERS (Milkweed Editions)

“You’re gonna wanna find the biggest branch you can and make a lot of noise as you run.”

This was the only terse instruction I received from Jill, the sheep farmer I would spend the next two weeks shadowing, before she flung open the gate to the pasture and thirty ewes and lambs rushed bleating towards me. It was my job to corral them uphill from the pasture to the barn for the evening, along a winding dirt path, through the forest and fading ...
STRANGE ATTRACTORS: THE EPHREM STORIES, by Janice Deal, reviewed by Ellen Prentiss Campbell

STRANGE ATTRACTORS: THE EPHREM STORIES, by Janice Deal, reviewed by Ellen Prentiss Campbell

fiction reviews, reviews /

A Short Story Collection by Janice Deal, reviewed by Ellen Prentiss Campbell
STRANGE ATTRACTORS: THE EPHREM STORIES (New Door Books)

Janice Deal has said of her earlier award-winning fiction that place is often her muse. Now in Strange Attractors: The Ephrem Stories, that muse—that place—is the fictional town of Ephrem, Illinois. The town itself becomes a composite multi-voiced character. For everyone in town, whether native, new arrival, or transient stranger, loneliness is a unifying affliction, a theme introduced in “This One Is Okay,” the outstanding first story in the collection.

In “This One Is Okay,” lifelong ...

SHY, a novel by Max Porter, reviewed by Alex Behm

SHY, a novel by Max Porter, reviewed by Alex Behm

fiction reviews, reviews /

SHY, a novel by Max Porter, reviewed by Alex BehmA Novel by Max Porter, reviewed by Alex Behm
SHY (Graywolf Press)

Max Porter, previously nominated for the Man Booker Prize among other awards, has just published a fourth novel, Shy. The title character, Shy, is an adolescent enrolled at Last Chance, a live-in program for troubled youths outside of London. When I read about Shy in Max Porter’s new novel, I found a strange intimacy with this character, someone trying to navigate the world without any idea of how to do such a thing.

To highlight the turbulence of youth, Shy’s story is told not ...

Two Takes on LET’S GO LET’S GO LET’S GO, stories by Cleo Qian: Lillian Lowenthal and Audrey Lai

Two Takes on LET’S GO LET’S GO LET’S GO, stories by Cleo Qian: Lillian Lowenthal and Audrey Lai

fiction reviews, reviews /

One New Book, Two Reviews
LET’S GO LET’S GO LET’S GO
by Cleo Qian
Tin House Books, 246 pages

Cleaver's internship program offers the opportunity to review a new book from a small or indie press under the mentorship of a senior editor. We loved how this summer, Lillian and Audrey were both jazzed about Cleo Qian's new collection from Tin House, LET’S GO LET’S GO LET’S GO. Read below for two smart takes on one smart book:

LILLIAN

Lillian Lowenthal

Lillian Lowenthal is a recent graduate of Vassar College, where she ...

SCENE OF THE CRIME, a novel by Patrick Modianom, reviewed by Jeanne Bonner

SCENE OF THE CRIME, a novel by Patrick Modianom, reviewed by Jeanne Bonner

fiction reviews, reviews, translation /

SCENE OF THE CRIME by Patrick Modiano translated by Mark Polizzotti Yale University Press, 157 pages reviewed by Jeanne Bonner

I write down all kinds of little snippets of thought because otherwise they will float away. For example, one day in the small notebook I keep in my car, I scrawled, “I think I am losing my fingerprints.” Sometimes I write as if in a trance. I must—otherwise it’s difficult to explain this command that I recorded one day: “Map my brain.” You could say it’s a call for a decoder ring of sorts, or simply my secret instructions to ...
RIGHT THIS WAY, novel by Miriam N. Kotzin, reviewed by Lynn Levin

RIGHT THIS WAY, novel by Miriam N. Kotzin, reviewed by Lynn Levin

RIGHT THIS WAY by Miriam N. Kotzin Spuyten Duyvil, 339 pages reviewed by Lynn Levin

They say it can be done, but it is hard, very hard, for most betrayed wives to regain trust and forge ahead in a marriage with a husband who has cheated. This may hold true even if the man has ended the affair, even if he feels remorse, even if he is not a repeat offender, even if he tries to repair the marital bond. Warranted or not, suspicion, like a persistent shadow, may stalk a woman’s thoughts. She may not be able to rid ...
HERmione, a novel by Hilda Doolittle (H.D.), reviewd by Aalia Jagwani

HERmione, a novel by Hilda Doolittle (H.D.), reviewd by Aalia Jagwani

fiction reviews, reviews /

HERmione by Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) New Directions, 288 pages reviewed by Aalia Jagwani

When I started reading HERmione, I knew nothing about Hilda Doolittle, the American modernist poet better known as H.D. But although intensely personal and grounded in an endlessly fascinating life, HERmiones slow unravelling of H.D.’s psychology is arguably all the more enticing in when approached unknowingly. Reading HERmione did not feel effortless—this is not a book that propels you forward. It instead holds you back, grappling in the realm of ambiguity that the protagonist inhabits. It is an exercise in restraint — from tending instinctively toward the straightforward, ...
HERRICK’S END, a novel by T.M. Blanchet, reviewed by Jae Sutton

HERRICK’S END, a novel by T.M. Blanchet, reviewed by Jae Sutton

fiction reviews, reviews /

HERRICK’S END, a novel by T.M. Blanchet, reviewed by Jae SuttonHERRICK’S END by T.M. Blanchet Tiny Fox Press, 299 pages reviewed by Jae Sutton

Born and raised in Boston, mostly by his mother—who is loved by everyone she meets—Ollie Delgato has had to endure multiple hardships. But he has a plan. At nineteen, he is admitted to Bunker Hill Community College on a full scholarship and gets a job at Bonfligio’s Caffe, which comes with an apartment located just above the shop. His main goals are to lose weight and fall in love. More than anything, he wants to “become the kind of person that guys wanted to hang out ...
A MOUNTAIN TO THE NORTH, A LAKE TO THE SOUTH, PATHS TO THE WEST, A RIVER TO THE EAST, a novel  by László Krasznahorkai, reviewed by Dylan Cook

A MOUNTAIN TO THE NORTH, A LAKE TO THE SOUTH, PATHS TO THE WEST, A RIVER TO THE EAST, a novel by László Krasznahorkai, reviewed by Dylan Cook

fiction reviews, reviews, translation /
A MOUNTAIN TO THE NORTH, A LAKE TO THE SOUTH, PATHS TO THE WEST, A RIVER TO THE EAST by László Krasznahorkai translated by Ottilie Mulzet New Directions, 144 pages reviewed by Dylan Cook It would be fair to say that there’s only one real, human character in A Mountain to the North, but even that feels generous. The grandson of Prince Genji, as he’s referred to throughout the novella, isn’t substantial enough to have his own name. He wears a kimono and geta, he gets motion sickness, and he loves gardens. He isn’t very notable, but he ...
LESSER KNOWN MONSTERS OF THE 21ST CENTURY, stories by Kim Fu, reviewed by Prisha Mehta

LESSER KNOWN MONSTERS OF THE 21ST CENTURY, stories by Kim Fu, reviewed by Prisha Mehta

fiction reviews, reviews /

LESSER KNOWN MONSTERS OF THE 21ST CENTURY by Kim Fu Tin House Books, 220 pages reviewed by Prisha Mehta

A customer seeks out advanced simulation technology to recreate a conversation with her dead mother, but is refused on the grounds that relief from grief is too addictive a product to ethically sell. A young woman moves into a house crowded with hundreds of out-of-season June bugs as she recalls the emotionally abusive relationship she has just left behind. Every person on the planet loses their ability to taste, all of a sudden, all at once, and an artist makes a ...
WIN ME SOMETHING, a novel by Kyle Lucia Wu, reviewed by Annie Cao

WIN ME SOMETHING, a novel by Kyle Lucia Wu, reviewed by Annie Cao

fiction reviews, reviews /

WIN ME SOMETHING by Kyle Lucia Wu Tin House, 272 pages reviewed by Annie Cao

In Win Me Something, Kyle Lucia Wu’s enthralling debut novel, Willa Chen is a biracial Chinese-American girl who starts a nannying job for the Adriens, a wealthy family in Tribeca. Willa has always struggled to feel a sense of belonging when it comes to community; she’s not fully Chinese but not fully white either. She faces racial prejudice and microaggressions while living in New Jersey as a child and New York as an adult. Her parents are divorced and have started their own separate ...
CLEOPATRA AND FRANKENSTEIN, a novel by Coco Mellors, reviewed by Stephanie Fluckey

CLEOPATRA AND FRANKENSTEIN, a novel by Coco Mellors, reviewed by Stephanie Fluckey

fiction reviews, reviews /

CLEOPATRA AND FRANKENSTEIN by Coco Mellors Bloomsbury, 384 pages reviewed by Stephanie Fluckey

I was attracted to the novel Cleopatra and Frankenstein because the title characters and I share something in common: a short courtship followed by elopement. In Coco Mellors’s debut novel, I was curious to see what she would do with this scenario, long fabled in movies and books, but also very real to me. My elopement was born out of love, seventeen hundred miles of distance, and an international border, while Cleo’s and Frank’s marriage was born out of love and an expiring visa. Though Cleo and ...
THE MEMORY LIBRARIAN AND OTHER STORIES OF DIRTY COMPUTER by Janelle Monáe, reviewed by Kristie Gadson

THE MEMORY LIBRARIAN AND OTHER STORIES OF DIRTY COMPUTER by Janelle Monáe, reviewed by Kristie Gadson

fiction reviews, reviews /

THE MEMORY LIBRARIAN AND OTHER STORIES OF DIRTY COMPUTER by Janelle Monáe Harper Voyager, 321 Pages reviewed by Kristie Gadson

In her latest album Dirty Computer, songstress and visionary Janelle Monáe sings of a future bathed in the blinding light of a new regime. In a world where an individual’s inner circuitry—their deepest thoughts, feelings, and desires—faces judgment from the illuminating eye of New Dawn, freedom is sought out by those who find liberation in the shadows. Monáe’s songs follow the story of Jane 57821, whose queerness made society view her as a deviant with unclean coding—a “dirty computer.” ...
THE ORIGINAL GLITCH, a novel by Melanie Moyer, reviewed by Michael Sasso

THE ORIGINAL GLITCH, a novel by Melanie Moyer, reviewed by Michael Sasso

fiction reviews, reviews /

THE ORIGINAL GLITCH by Melanie Moyer Lanternfish Press, 362 pages reviewed by Michael Sasso

“Jesus was a carpenter, King Arthur was an orphan, and Laura was a broke, lonely millennial.” This is how Laura, the artificially intelligent protagonist, is summed up in Melanie Moyer’s sophomore novel, The Original Glitch (Lanternfish Press, October 2021). Every generation envisions its savior as one of its most unassuming: so, while the Wachowskis gave us introverted, Gen-X cyberhacker Neo in The Matrix films, Moyer provides Laura, the downtrodden but culturally-aware Millennial. Unlike Neo, however, Laura cannot escape her virtual prison, and her “magical” digital powers ...
THE TENDEREST OF STRINGS, a novel by Steven Schwartz, reviewed by Ellen Prentiss Campbell

THE TENDEREST OF STRINGS, a novel by Steven Schwartz, reviewed by Ellen Prentiss Campbell

fiction reviews, reviews /

THE TENDEREST OF STRINGS, a novel by Steven Schwartz, reviewed by Ellen Prentiss CampbellTHE TENDEREST OF STRINGS by Steven Schwartz Regal House Publishing, 260 pages

reviewed by Ellen Prentiss Campbell Steven Schwartz’s new novel The Tenderest of Strings is the story of a marriage and a family in trouble, an exploration of how family ties constrain and sustain, stretch and snap. Reuben and Ardith Rosenfeld and sons Harry and Jamie are recent transplants to Welden, Colorado. They moved from Chicago, “looking for a small-town cure and a fresh start” to Reuben’s professional struggles, Harry’s emotional and social problems, Jamie’s asthma, and increasing distance in the marriage. But rather than providing a geographic cure, ...
SINGING LESSONS FOR THE STYLISH CANARY, a novel by Laura Stanfill, appreciation by Beth Kephart

SINGING LESSONS FOR THE STYLISH CANARY, a novel by Laura Stanfill, appreciation by Beth Kephart

SINGING LESSONS FOR THE STYLISH CANARY by Laura Stanfill Lanternfish Press, 352 pages

An appreciation by Beth Kephart On Sale: April 19, 2022

Picture a serinette: Music in a box. Notes arranged as pins. Crank it, and here it comes: the auditory sensation of someone whistling, maybe, or the chirp of cheerful birds. Now place that serinette into a quiet, magical village—an imaginary French town called Mireville, where women work lace and men craft these intricate music boxes and the sun shines ever so persistently, thanks to an incident some time ago, when a baby stopped crying and the clouds—well, ...
PHOTOTAXIS, a novel by Olivia Tapiero, reviewed by Dylan Cook

PHOTOTAXIS, a novel by Olivia Tapiero, reviewed by Dylan Cook

fiction reviews, reviews, translation /

PHOTOTAXIS by Olivia Tapiero translated by Kit Schluter Nightboat Books, 128 pages reviewed by Dylan Cook

There’s something refreshingly laid-back about Olivia Tapiero’s take on apocalyptic fiction. Most novels in the genre come off a bit preachy, warning us page after page that X, Y, and Z will be our downfall. Perhaps even more grating, they go through the trouble of explaining exactly how it will end, as if we can be certain of that from our pre-apocalyptic world. Tapiero looks at these conventions and casually walks past them. In Phototaxis, the end of the world makes very little ...
SCORPIONFISH, a novel by Natalie Bakopoulos, reviewed by Aleksia Silverman

SCORPIONFISH, a novel by Natalie Bakopoulos, reviewed by Aleksia Silverman

fiction reviews, reviews /

SCORPIONFISH by Natalie Bakopoulos Tin House, 256 pages reviewed by Aleksia Mira Silverman

Scorpionfish by Natalie Bakopoulos begins with a return. Mira, a Greek-born academic in her late thirties, arrives in Athens after her parents' funeral. She must sort out the remainder of her parents' affairs—Mira’s childhood home in Athens and another apartment on an island referred to only as N. While Mira is stranded outside her apartment building without a key, she has a chance encounter with her next-door neighbor, a sea captain. Later, the pair spend night after night on their adjoining balconies. While they are unable to see ...
WALKING ON COWRIE SHELLS , short stories by Nana Nkweti, reviewed by Juliana Lamy

WALKING ON COWRIE SHELLS , short stories by Nana Nkweti, reviewed by Juliana Lamy

fiction reviews, reviews /

WALKING ON COWRIE SHELLS by Nana Nkweti Graywolf Press, 200 pages reviewed by Juliana Lamy

WALKING ON COWRIE SHELLS , short stories by Nana Nkweti, reviewed by Juliana LamyThe ten stories in Nana Nkweti’s debut short story collection Walking on Cowrie Shells offer tableaus of Blackness that are as varied as they are vivid. From tale to tale, Nkweti’s genres shift as surely as a living body does, limbs never at a single angle for long. The same assortment of stories that renders a realistic portrait of race and romance within New York City’s Black literary scene delves, with the same intrepid narration, into a crime drama’s layered violence and moral contemplation. Though ...
A GHOST IN THE THROAT, a novel by Doireann Ní Ghríofa, reviewed by Beth Kephart

A GHOST IN THE THROAT, a novel by Doireann Ní Ghríofa, reviewed by Beth Kephart

A GHOST IN THE THROAT by Doireann Ní Ghríofa

Biblioasis [North American edition forthcoming in June] reviewed by Beth Kephart

“This is a female text,” Doireann Ní Ghríofa asserts as her story begins. A rouse. A prayer. A persuasion. A female text because Ní Ghríofa suffuses her days with the domestic arts of hoovering, dusting, folding, mothering, and bends her prose toward those ticking rhythms when she carves out a moment and writes. A female text because Ní Ghríofa carries the lament of Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, an Irish noblewoman of the late eighteenth century, in her bones as she ...
Come on up cover art

COME ON UP, short stories by Jordi Nopca, reviewed by Michael McCarthy

fiction reviews, reviews, translation /

COME ON UP by Jordi Nopca translated by Mara Faye Lethem Bellevue Literary Press, 224 pages reviewed by Michael McCarthy

Come on up cover artAt first, it’s a promise. Come on up! It’s a pledge made to every up-and-comer in Barcelona. The city provides a backdrop for Jordi Nopca’s short story collection Come On Up, translated from Catalan to English by Mara Faye Lethem. His stories skillfully traverse decadence and depravity, splendor and squalor, the tragic and the comic, the boring and the absurd. They will resonate with anyone who has a decent job, a decent home, and decent career prospects but is still ...
MORE MIRACLE THAN BIRD, a novel by Alice Miller reviewed by Jozie Konczal

MORE MIRACLE THAN BIRD, a novel by Alice Miller reviewed by Jozie Konczal

fiction reviews, reviews /

MORE MIRACLE THAN BIRD by Alice Miller Tin House Books, 352 pages reviewed by Jozie Konczal

I approached More Miracle than Bird, Alice Miller’s debut novel about W.B. Yeats and his erstwhile muse, Georgie Hyde-White, as a poet interested in learning about Yeats and the woman who influenced his work. Although we get insights about the poet and his work, the novel is more about the journey of his muse, a naïve but determined rebel attempting to thwart the traditional roles that have been carved out for her. We see her youthful struggles and missteps, but by the novel’s close, ...
A World Between book jacket

A WORLD BETWEEN, a novel by Emily Hashimoto, reviewed by Ashira Shirali

fiction reviews, reviews /

A WORLD BETWEEN by Emily Hashimoto Feminist Press, 440 pages reviewed by Ashira Shirali

A World Between book jacketLet’s be honest—the chances of walking into a bookstore and finding a literary lesbian romance are low. You’re more likely to find an entire cookbook consisting of sourdough recipes. If you want the book to feature characters of color, your odds sink even lower. Emily Hashimoto’s debut novel promises to fill this lacuna. A World Between (Feminist Press, forthcoming) follows the relationship between two women of color, Leena and Eleanor, through college and adulthood. The novel alternates between Leena’s and Eleanor’s perspectives, revealing the yearnings and ...
Garden by the Sea book jacket

GARDEN BY THE SEA, a novel by Mercè Rodoreda, reviewed by Anthony Cardellini

fiction reviews, reviews, translation /

GARDEN BY THE SEA by Mercè Rodoreda translated by Martha Tennent and Maruxa Relaño Open Letter Books, 203 pages reviewed by Anthony Cardellini

Garden by the Sea book jacketWhen I began my part-time job at a botanical garden in the fall of 2017, I had next to zero gardening experience, and I knew little about the different flowers and trees that grow in the Piedmont region of North Carolina. I showed up that first day completely unprepared, without so much as a pair of gloves. But I was lucky enough to be mentored by David, a man in his early thirties from Maine, who’d been ...
cockfight book jacket

Cockfight, stories by María Fernanda Ampuero, reviewed by Ashley Hajimirsadeghi

fiction reviews, reviews, translation /

Cockfight by María Fernanda Ampuero translated by Frances Riddle Feminist Press, 128 pages reviewed by Ashley Hajimirsadeghi

cockfight book jacketIn her debut novel, Ecuadorian writer and journalist María Fernanda Ampuero takes an unflinching and intimate look into the turbulent homes and lives of Latin American women. By placing her powerful, moving stories in settings like violent domestic households or lower income neighborhoods, the characters in Ampuero’s Cockfight combat their situations with acts of bravery, loss, and love. As the characters seem to suffocate in their environments, there are acts of bravery, loss, and love. The idea of a happy family ...
The Sport of the Gods book jacket

THE SPORT OF THE GODS, a novel by Paul Laurence Dunbar, reviewed by Dylan Cook

fiction reviews, reviews /

THE SPORT OF THE GODS by Paul Laurence Dunbar Signet Classics, 176 pages reviewed by Dylan Cook

The Sport of the Gods book jacketFor the best experience, I recommend reading The Sport of the Gods outside on a cloudy day, rain threatening. As you fall in step with Paul Laurence Dunbar’s rhythmic prose, it’ll be easy to forget that you’re at nature’s mercy. Let the clouds decide whether or not you get to read uninterrupted. Subject to this force, you may more easily understand what the Hamilton family endures in this novel. As deceits and misfortunes pile on top of each other, the Hamiltons decide that ...
Clotel book jacket

CLOTEL OR THE PRESIDENT’S DAUGHTER, a novel by William Wells Brown, written in 1853, reviewed by Dylan Cook

fiction reviews, reviews /
In 1998, scientists performed a DNA test to answer one of the longest running rumors in American history. Historians could no longer deny the truth: Yes, Thomas Jefferson had fathered children with his slave Sally Hemings. But plenty of people already knew that. William Wells Brown knew this beyond a reasonable doubt when he published Clotel in 1853, a novel that imagines the lives and tribulations of Jefferson’s slave-born daughters. The characters are all fictional, but Brown’s creative liberties stray little from reality. Masters frequently made concubines of their slaves, so why would Jefferson be any exception? Jefferson’s words that ...
THE DARK HEART OF EVERY WILD THING, a novel by Joseph Fasano, reviewed by Michael McCarthy

THE DARK HEART OF EVERY WILD THING, a novel by Joseph Fasano, reviewed by Michael McCarthy

fiction reviews, reviews /
In the moral universe of poet Joseph Fasano’s debut novel, The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing, death lurks in every corner of life. A father, bereaved of his wife, must journey through the teeming forests of British Columbia and hunt a fabled mountain lion, to him the very “mind of the wild.” Three years ago, it mauled his son, the father powerless to save him. Now, as he narrates his monomaniacal fight for survival, the hunt for the mountain lion becomes an obsession, borne of unfathomable grief, to exact revenge on a world that has stolen everything he loved ...
ON EARTH WE’RE BRIEFLY GORGEOUS, a novel by Ocean Vuong, reviewed by Claire Kooyman

ON EARTH WE’RE BRIEFLY GORGEOUS, a novel by Ocean Vuong, reviewed by Claire Kooyman

fiction reviews, reviews /
Ocean Vuong’s writing is steeped in memories, the history of which sometimes precedes him chronologically. This was true of his poetry in the collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds, and it is also true of his first novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, recently released by Penguin Press. This novel is a recursive exploration of the path memories take through a family. The narrator’s life is impacted by the traumas his mother and grandmother suffered before he was born. As a very young child, Vuong’s narrator, Little Dog, learns quickly that not all authority figures can be trusted absolutely, and ...
Cleanness Book Jacket

CLEANNESS, a novel by Garth Greenwell, reviewed by Nikki Caffier Smith

fiction reviews, reviews /
At its heart, Cleanness is a novel about duality: the duality of spirit, of desire, of self-perception. How one can be “dirty” and “clean” at the same time. With deft and expressive writing, Greenwell questions our understanding of these concepts. What does it mean to be dirty? What does it mean to be clean? To go outside or stay in. To stay in or go outside. Perhaps they are just two facets of the same thing ...
MINOR DETAIL, a novel by Adania Shibli, translated by Elisabeth Jaquette and reviewed by Dylan Cook

MINOR DETAIL, a novel by Adania Shibli, translated by Elisabeth Jaquette and reviewed by Dylan Cook

Tables need at least three legs to stand; guitar strings only ring when taut around two points. Minor Detail, Adania Shibli’s third novel, takes its title as a challenge: how much can hinge upon one moment? How can a single moment of pain bridge the past to the present?  ...
THE ROYAL ABDULS, a novel by Ramiza Shamoun Koya, reviewed by Beth Kephart

THE ROYAL ABDULS, a novel by Ramiza Shamoun Koya, reviewed by Beth Kephart

During the day and a half that I ravenously read Ramiza Shamoun Koya’s debut novel, The Royal Abduls, I asked myself these questions. I leaned into the lives of Koya’s magnificently drawn characters, into the nest of troubles they inadvertently twigged together, into the love they did not know how to express. Or forgot to express. Or ran out of time to express ...
The Beauty of Their Youth book jacket

The Beauty of Their Youth: Stories by Joyce Hinnefeld, reviewed by Beth Kephart

There are five Hinnefeld stories, four of them previously published in literary journals, in The Beauty of Their Youth, a release from the Wolfson Press American Storytellers series. One is about the legacy of a “pool of desire.” One is about the accessorizing of a family crime. One is about the tragedy of idle desires, another about an artist and his elastic resume, and another about a mother and daughter on a trip abroad and the reverb of the personal past. The stories take us to Bucks County, PA, inside the pages of a Carson McCullers book, toward Everglades gators ...
Incidental Inventions book jacket

INCIDENTAL INVENTIONS, short pieces by Elena Ferrante, reviewed by David Grandouiller

Who is the Italian novelist we call Elena Ferrante? Since her first novel’s publication in 1992, she—with the help of her publishers—has carefully maintained the real author’s anonymity. Many readers have treated this guarded privacy as a playful challenge, making theories and guesses, particularly in recent years as Ferrante has become increasingly celebrated. The Italian philologist Marco Santagata, after analyzing her oeuvre, suggested she might be the writer Marcella Marmo (Marmo and her publisher denied this). More controversially, the journalist Claudio Gatti dug up financial records to claim that Anita Raja is the author behind Ferrante—others suggest it may be ...
Sketches of the Criminal World Book Jacket

SKETCHES OF THE CRIMINAL WORLD: FURTHER KOLYMA STORIES by Varlam Shalamov reviewed by Dylan Cook

fiction reviews, reviews /

SKETCHES OF THE CRIMINAL WORLD: FURTHER KOLYMA STORIES by Varlam Shalamov translated by Donald Rayfield New York Review Books, 576 pages 

reviewed by Dylan Cook

Purchase this book to benefit Cleaver A man gets ready to murder his boss with a pickaxe. A woman is grateful that her newborn twins don’t survive. A doctor refuses to treat new patients, fearing that someone has been sent to kill him. Characters like these populate Varlam Shalamov’s criminal world, the depraved underbelly of society born and bred in the Soviet prison system. Many of the criminal world’s citizens were locked up under vague ...
Degrees of Difficulty jacket cover

DEGREES OF DIFFICULTY, a novel by Julie E. Justicz, reviewed by Beth Kephart

I thought a lot about this family as I read Julie Justicz’s novel Degrees of Difficulty. Here the child at the center of the heartbreak is third-born Ben, born with damage to his twenty-first chromosome, an “omission in the blueprint” that has resulted in “the recessed jaw that would lead to feeding issues, the missing kidney due to frequent injections, hospitalizations, IV medications. And later, the seizures: Body-wracking grand mals that daily medications could not control.” ...
Book Cover Grand Union

GRAND UNION, short stories by Zadie Smith, reviewed by Eliza Browning

fiction reviews, reviews /
Grand Union, a collection of nineteen works of short fiction, represents an exciting addition to her oeuvre. The characters it features—black and white, young and old, male and female, gay and straight, and hailing from both sides of the Atlantic—are as diverse a cast as populate her novels, but their stories veer from the first-person narrative to the nonlinear and surreal to the essayistic ...
Ruby and Roland Book Jacket

RUBY & ROLAND: A NOVEL by Faith Sullivan, reviewed by Beth Kephart

When Faith Sullivan began writing what has become known as her Harvester books—novels like The Cape Ann and The Empress of One and Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse—she invited readers to join her in a fictional Minnesota landscape, then gave them many reasons to return. Sullivan’s Harvester is a palpable place. Its people are relatable and real. They carry burdens and they engage in kindness. Their bones bend with the hills ...
Empty Words Book Jacket

EMPTY WORDS, a novel by Mario Levrero, reviewed by Ashlee Paxton-Turner

fiction reviews, reviews, translation /
Organized as a series of handwriting exercises, Empty Words offers a look inside a novelist’s mind as he attempts to improve himself by improving his handwriting. Originally published in 1996 in Spanish, it is Levrero’s first novel translated into English. Annie McDermott, who introduces English language readers to Levrero, has translated other works from Spanish and Portuguese, and her translations have appeared in many places, including Granta, the White Review, Asymptote, Two Lines, and World Literature Today ...
Cover art for Max Havelaar

MAX HAVELAAR: OR, THE COFFEE AUCTIONS OF THE DUTCH TRADING COMPAN, a novel by Multatuli, reviewed by Dylan Cook

fiction reviews, reviews, translation /
Max Havelaar is likely an unfamiliar title to most American readers, and the Netherlands in general is an often overlooked source of literature. But make no mistake: the world over holds Max Havelaar in high regard. I recently had the chance to talk to a born-and-raised Dutchman, and I asked him if the title rang any bells. "Of course," he told me. "It's a classic, everyone reads it." Think along the lines of Pride and Prejudice. In his short but poignant introduction to this edition of the novel, Indonesian author Pramoedya Ananta Toer makes the bold claim that Max Havelaar ...
Cover art for I and You

I AND YOU, stories by J. David Stevens, reviewed by David Amadio

fiction reviews, reviews /
Many of the characters in J. David Stevens’s four-story collection I and You are Chinese immigrants; the author himself is not. In the book’s introduction, Stevens confides that he might never have written about these characters if not for the relationship with his wife Janet, whose ancestors left China in 1899 and later settled in Richmond, Virginia. Reflecting on the source material for his multi-generational narratives, Stevens, whose Mexico is Missing and Other Stories won the 2006 Ohio State University Prize in Short Fiction, admits an apprehension of the age: “[A] part of me still wonders if such stories cross ...
Jacket cover for The Book of X

THE BOOK OF X, a novel by Sarah Rose Etter, reviewed by Elizabeth Mosier

“I was born a knot like my mother and her mother before her,” Sarah Rose Etter’s debut novel begins, drawing readers into Cassie’s life story, The Book of X. “Picture three women with their torsos twisted like thick pieces of rope with a single hitch in the center.” ...
jacket cover for Berlin Alexanderplatz

BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ, a novel by Alfred Döblin, reviewed by Tyson Duffy

A thought experiment: imagine that back during the peak prosperity years of the Obama Administration, with optimism at a high and unemployment dropping, that the good Dr. Oliver Sacks had unexpectedly published a despairing novel featuring a one-armed murdering pimp with white-supremacist leanings named Frank Beaverbrains. This dull petty criminal wanders Manhattan—or some gentrifying urban center of high culture and national pride—selling tie stands and alt-right newsletters, roughing up prostitutes, shooting up bars, and volunteering for a number of disastrous heists before winding up a diminished nobody, an assistant porter at a small company with less than nothing left to ...
FAREWELL, AYLIS: A NON-TRADITIONAL NOVEL IN THREE WORKS by Akram Aylisl, translated by Katherine E. Young, reviewed by Ryan K. Strader

FAREWELL, AYLIS: A NON-TRADITIONAL NOVEL IN THREE WORKS by Akram Aylisl, translated by Katherine E. Young, reviewed by Ryan K. Strader

fiction reviews, reviews, translation /
We don’t often read literature from Azerbaijan, for many reasons. It’s a small post-Soviet country that is hard to find on the map, with a Turkic language that makes finding translators difficult, and a government that still censors its writers Soviet-style. We don’t generally stroll down the aisle at a bookstore and discover the “Azeri” section. The only thing harder to find might be Georgian, and I’ll only say “might.” Probably most of us have no idea what novelists in Azerbaijan write about, what kind of social justice concerns they have, or what kind of risks those writers take to ...
OPTIC NERVE, a novel by Maria Gainza, translated by Thomas Bunstead, reviewed by Justin Goodman

OPTIC NERVE, a novel by Maria Gainza, translated by Thomas Bunstead, reviewed by Justin Goodman

fiction reviews, reviews, translation /
Written from the perspective of an unnamed Argentinian art critic, Optic Nerve flits from her present to her childhood memories, to her culture’s memories, in order to develop a lineage between self and cultural artifacts, become an optic nerve transmitting information from the external to the internal. The most representative instance of this transmission takes the form of a historical moment remembered by the narrator: while Señora Alvear, “once upon a time the famous soprano Regina Pacini,” sits at her dinner table beneath a painting by French animal painter Alfred de Dreux, “her eye travels back and forth constantly between ...
ALL FOR NOTHING, a novel by Walter Kempowski, reviewed by Tyson Duffy

ALL FOR NOTHING, a novel by Walter Kempowski, reviewed by Tyson Duffy

fiction reviews, reviews, translation /
Every self-professed American optimist should read the oeuvre of Walter Kempowski—not that they ever will. The chronicler of brutality was never given a fair shake even by his fellow Germans, and despite strong book sales, by literary award committees. Kempowski had plenty of reasons to be angry—angry at his Nazi father whom he betrayed, at what the agonized Sebastian Haffner once called the “moral inadequacy of the German character,” at the literary world for snubbing him, and at every center of power involved in WWII: the Russians, British, Germans, Europe itself. The triumphant Soviets—without whom WWII could not have been ...
Book cover for Besotted

BESOTTED, a novel by Melissa Duclos, reviewed by Lisa Johnson Mitchell

Melissa Duclos’ debut novel Besotted is a lyrical, urgent love story about two young American women, Sasha and Liz, who run away to China to try to find themselves. Sasha has fled all the trappings of her privileged life, including her father who disapproves of her sexuality. Liz, the object of Sasha’s desire, has packed up and left her predictable existence and Amherst-educated boyfriend, having grown tired of being an afterthought of his otherwise-enchanted life ...
ADIÓS TO MY PARENTS, a novel by Héctor Aguilar Camín, reviewed by Kim Livingston

ADIÓS TO MY PARENTS, a novel by Héctor Aguilar Camín, reviewed by Kim Livingston

fiction reviews, translation /
Adiós To My Parents is a universal family story. Although the setting (Mexico, Belize, Guatemala) is unfamiliar to me—I’ve lived in the Chicago suburbs all of my fifty-one years and, regrettably, have taken only one Spanish class—the people in this book are so richly drawn that I know them instantly ...
SACRED DARKNESS: THE LAST DAYS OF THE GULAG, a narrative by Levan Berdzenishvili, reviewed by Ryan K. Strader

SACRED DARKNESS: THE LAST DAYS OF THE GULAG, a narrative by Levan Berdzenishvili, reviewed by Ryan K. Strader

“As with any book, my book had its own special fate—it was born by mistake,” claims Levan Berdzenishvili, in the opening chapter of Sacred Darkness. Levan wakes up in a hospital, sick and disoriented, with a high fever. He realizes he has some debts to pay before he can jaunt off to Hades. Levan is a specialist in Greek literature, so he doesn’t talk of “dying.” He refers to “my departure to Hades.” ...