The Threepenny Review – Winter 2006

The contributors list for The Threepenny Review reads like a Who’s Who of the literary world, with contributions in this issue alone by A.L. Kennedy, W.S. DiPiero, Jill McDonough and Anne Carson. The poetry and fiction featured in this issue impress with beauty and simplicity—you won’t need to Google a thing.

The contributors list for The Threepenny Review reads like a Who’s Who of the literary world, with contributions in this issue alone by A.L. Kennedy, W.S. DiPiero, Jill McDonough and Anne Carson. The poetry and fiction featured in this issue impress with beauty and simplicity—you won’t need to Google a thing. Bernardo Atxaga’s “Four Times Snow,” a short fiction piece describing four snow storms, each twenty years apart, stuns the reader with its quiet power: “The first time, it arrived suddenly and the flakes began to fall slowly like butterflies, white butterflies mainly, and the old woman who used to take care of us looked out of the kitchen window and, with a laugh that rose up from the very depths of her belief the way a flame rises up from the ashes, she exclaimed, How can people say there’s no God; then, like someone keeping time, she lowered her hand to her apron and gave the signal for a silence to begin, a silence that gradually covered everything.” But many journals offer compelling literature. What sets The Threepenny Review apart from other little magazines is its cultural essays. A frequent feature of this journal is the symposium, a series of essays on a single topic. The essayists in this issue focus on plot, many writing to defend plot from its current disfavor, although Geoff Dyer chimes in to denigrate plot some more. Other essays tackle unexpected topics—music and pain, Dylan’s worst song, the placebo effect—with insight and lucidity. Treat yourself to a subscription to The Threepenny Review. It’s a bit like the New Yorker, only without the self-importance and the umlauts. [The Threepenny Review, P.O. Box 9131, Berkeley, CA 94709. Single issue $7. www.threepennyreview.com] —Deborah Mead