Lies, First Person is an extremely ambitious novel, which in the end does not lend itself to firm or lasting conclusions. Hareven has produced a work of dramatic and impressive contradictions. Between the two poles of questionable truth and falsehood, she examines such weighty issues as sin, guilt, forgiveness, Judaism, Christianity, motherhood, womanhood, violence, and especially the limitations and possibilities of art.
For a week now, in the apartment below mine, there’s been a tiny baby, brand new to the world. When it cries what come through the floorboards are the sounds of a catfight. Nothing human, not even close, but still the noise registers as child in need and pulls me from sleep by the hair. […]
Jacob Appel has been very, very busy. In his early forties, Appel is a lawyer. And a doctor. And a medical ethicist. And, oh yes, according to his author bio, he’s also published more than two hundred stories, collecting numerous writerly awards and accolades along the way. In the last three years alone, he’s released six books: four story collections, a book of essays, a mystery novel, and a literary novel.
To call Robin McLean a storyteller is technically correct but misses the point of her work; McLean doesn’t write stories so much as she writes about them. To this end, her short fiction collection Reptile House examines the malleability of character and plot, as well as how this might be used to subvert the conventions of the genre.
Driving the stories is ZoBell’s sure-handed and emotionally intelligent prose. We feel more than see the layers of construction gradually build, sentence by sentence, page by page. The result is stories that are deeply felt, whose weight is sensed, and speak volumes beyond what is actually written on the page.
Ann Beattie’s signature details—her close observation of contemporary manners, speech, culture, and relationships—are as fresh here as they have always been.
From Zambian author Tanvi Bush comes the smooth-flowing tale of siblings orphaned by the HIV/AIDS pandemic that swept through Africa beginning in the 1990s. The novel tells the heartbreaking story of a tenacious ten-year-old girl named Luse, whom we meet during her time on the streets of Lusaka.
Gander is . . . a poet and these talents are evident in his incredible control of imagery and pacing as he describes his characters and setting.
Listen to our podcast of this story here. Midmorning in mid-October, in the middle of the campus, Chandra stopped in the center of the crisscrossing sidewalks. She pulled the phone from her handbag and pretended to be texting someone; she smiled down at the screen as if someone had texted her back. She felt […]
The novel, which takes place in City B of the western nation Country A, is an uncanny, philosophical, and demanding exploration of love and existence. It follows an ensemble of characters: businessmen, plantation farmers, mistresses, housewives, street-sweepers, and insomniacs.