Book Reviews by Title - S (147)
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- Book Type Poetry
- by Sam Sax
- Publisher Black Lawrence Press
- Date Published September 2015
- ISBN-13 978-1-62557-950-8
- Format Paperback
- Pages 23pp
- Price $8.95
- Review by Heath Bowen
The only thing certain to drive somebody insane (or to at least let them think they are crazy) is to make them forget they are doing something different than what somebody else has done a hundred times before.
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- Book Type Fiction
- by Marie-Helene Bertino
- Publisher University of Iowa Press
- Date Published October 2012
- ISBN-13 978-1609381141
- Format Paperback
- Pages 164pp
- Price $16.00
- Review by Katy Haas
In her debut short story collection, Safe as Houses, Marie-Helene Bertino fills the pages with wit and warmth in her nine stories. Bertino, who served as the associate editor of One Story for six years, shows good mastery of the short story in her unique storylines—such as dating the idea of your significant other, or a lonely alien coming to Earth to learn more about humans.
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- Book Type Fiction
- by Jessamyn Hope
- Publisher Fig Tree Books
- Date Published June 2015
- ISBN-13 978-1-941493-06-9
- Format Paperback
- Pages 371pp
- Price $15.95
- Review by Jason Hess
Jessamyn Hope’s debut novel opens with Adam, a 26-year-old drug-addicted burnout, fleeing from New York City to Israel. Adam’s caretaker and closest companion, his grandfather, has recently died. During the airplane ride, Adam broods on whether American authorities are following him. Experiencing withdrawals and toting an odd assortment of belongings, including an elaborate gold brooch, he volunteers to work on a kibbutz. He’s searching for someone. The circumstances of his grandfather’s death, the significance of the brooch, and the identity of whom Adam is searching for drive the thoughtfully plotted Safekeeping.
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- Book Type Poetry
- by Donna de la Perrière
- Date Published December 2010
- ISBN-13 1584980761
- Format Paperback
- Pages 63pp
- Price $13.95
- Review by Kristin Abraham
Just one year after the publication of her first full-length book of poems (True Crime, Talisman House, 2009), Donna de la Perrière has presented us with another equally-stunning volume, precisely crafted and devastatingly haunting.
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- Book Type Novel
- by Edward Falco
- Publisher Unbridled Books
- Date Published October 2009
- ISBN-13 978-1-932961-88-1
- Format Paperback
- Pages 432pp
- Price $16.95
- Review by Laura Pryor
Falco begins this novel by introducing us, one by one, to the characters: Avery, a rebellious art student at Penn State, Lindsey and Hank, Avery’s aunt and uncle, and Kate, Avery’s widowed mother who is having an affair with Hank, her brother-in-law. The main story involves Avery and Grant, a thirty-something former performance artist from New York she meets at a campus party. Avery runs away to New York with the mysterious Grant after knowing him for less than 24 hours. In New York, Avery is thrown into the heart of the avant-garde art scene; Grant’s friends include a famous artist, a successful TV writer and a restaurateur. Grant himself had early success as a writer, but after he killed a man in self-defense while trucking stolen goods across state lines for his shady uncle Billy, he stopped writing. Now Grant’s only source of income is further work for Billy, who keeps him on the fringes of his criminal enterprises out of respect for his brother, Grant’s father.
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- Book Type Poetry
- by Mary Biddinger
- Publisher Black Lawrence Press
- Date Published June 2011
- ISBN-13 978-0982876619
- Format Paperback
- Pages 48pp
- Price $9.00
- Review by H. V. Cramond
When we first meet Saint Monica, she is covered in gauze and iodine. The
epigraph that introduces Mary Biddinger's Saint Monica informs us that the
historical St. Monica was student to St. Ambrose, mother to St. Augustine,
and wife of an abusive, alcoholic pagan. That Monica, patron saint of
adultery victims, alcoholism, and of course, disappointing children, spent
much of her time working for the redemption of her husband and once wayward
offspring.
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- Book Type Poetry
- by Dore Kiesselbach
- Publisher University of Pittsburgh Press
- Date Published November 2012
- ISBN-13 9780822962175
- Format Paperback
- Pages 88pp
- Price $15.95
- Review by Theresé Samson Wenham
It is much easier to read mediocre prose than mediocre poetry. It’s too easy to believe that writing poetry is simply a matter of connecting with raw emotions and that whatever “truths” arrive are, in and of themselves, enough. This is perhaps why poorly written poetry is so uncomfortable to read; it forgets that poetry is about writing in a heightened language, not just about what is being said. An excellent poem cannot be paraphrased; it cannot be translated into prose. Yet, when we come across a poet who masters the measure of language, it appears almost transparent, effortless. Reading through Dore Kiesselbach’s Salt Pier for the first time was like that for me.
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- Book Type Fiction
- by George McCormick
- Publisher Noemi Press
- Date Published December 2012
- ISBN-13 978-1934819241
- Format Paperback
- Pages 103pp
- Price $15.00
- Review by Michael Caylo-Baradi
In this collection, interstate highways are stoned with sad songs, while accelerating on The Stones. They speed towards motel rooms and roadside bars, sweaty in premonitions of tomorrows through the Mojave Desert, or swanky Palm Springs hanging out on tan lines and glamour that might turn off George McCormick’s characters. His are not L.A. types, hoping for alternatives to traffic jams, smog, or specters of road rage. But they are not rural either; they are somewhere in between, suspended in that vast space girdled by truck stops, railroads, dry landscapes, and coffee refills on Sunset Boulevard, before accelerating the 101 or I-5 towards midnight and beyond. They take anything outside the nine-to-five hustle, anything stable, to support a family, a budding romance, or dreams that might wake, glimmering, in their baby daughter’s eyes.
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- Book Type Novel
- by Lucia Nevai
- Publisher Tin House Books
- Date Published June 2008
- ISBN-13 978-0979419836
- Format Paperback
- Pages 240pp
- Price $14.95
- Review by Laura Di Giovine
Crane Cavanaugh is one of the most endearing, strange and
exceptional protagonists I have encountered in recent memory.
Take the strong opening of the prologue:
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- Book Type Fiction
- by Martin Riker
- Publisher Coffee House Press
- Date Published October 2018
- ISBN-13 978-1-56689-528-6
- Format Paperback
- Pages 256pp
- Price $16.95
- Review by Cody Lee
Samuel Johnson’s Eternal Return is the needle and thread that connects life and death, grumpy old man and flâneur. The story revolves around a fellow named Samuel Johnson who dies protecting his son from an armed lunatic. He then enters into the body of the lunatic as a passenger, watching the world like a TV show through the eyes of his own murderer. Eventually, the lunatic dies, and Samuel Johnson bounces from body to body, hoping to one day reunite with his son.
