by Melinda Gordon Blum The memoir Nein, Nein, Nein! has us at its subtitle. The “one man” is none other than Jerry Stahl, whose acerbic humor and kinetic prose transported his book Permanent Midnight into a fever dream classic, a standout in the crowded “junkie memoir” genre. Who better to pen a modern-day reckoning with the legacy of the Holocaust than an American Jew who’s no stranger to confronting demons—a man who himself has cheated death countless times? Nein, Nein, Nein! opens in 2016 with a decades-sober, late-midlife Stahl as he prepares to depart on a two-week European trip…
Book Reviews
by Trey Burnette Making mortgage payments, paying off credit card and student loan debt, and season tickets to the opera are excellent reasons for becoming an accomplice to your revolting non-boyfriend/boyfriend’s murders. At least they are for Charlie from Leitchfield. And even though his sort of love interest, Jignesh, is “a pompous sea monster from the depths of the Indian Ocean,” who can blame Charlie for his bad decisions as he falls in love with Jignesh’s “wealth and his ravishing South Asian skin”? Carlos Allende’s novel, Coffee, Shopping, Murder, Love, is set in 2012 ne’er-do-well Los Angeles with a couple of…
Reviewed by Peter Mladinic Poems are written by human beings “alone in a room” with language. They come out of lived lives. The poems in Madrigals come out of Caroline Goodwin’s lived life—things she has touched and ground she has stood on, alone and with others. Sometimes, that ground is a floor in a room, other times a forest floor, a meadow, a shoreline. Where she is, is very much a part of who she is. The speaker is a participant and uniquely herself with poems that convey the idea that nature is mostly innocent, society often corrupt, and the…
by Alessandro Romero Jordan Salama demonstrated that, like gold, stories can be found by looking into a river. After all, his debut book, Every Day the River Changes, ultimately tells a formidable story about other stories. On an adventure down the Magdalena River, Colombia’s most treasured waterway, Salama aims to push back social stigmas that misconstrue the country’s conflicted reputation for drug cartels and guerrilla groups. As he asserts in the opening pages, “No longer is a book on Colombia guaranteed to be all about Pablo Escobar and his narco henchmen.” In four weeks, he encounters people from diverse…
According to the CDC, one in four people in the United States live with some type of disability, whether visible or less apparent. Without respectful discussion and proper representation in the media, those living with disabilities are often stereotyped and misrepresented. This is also true for people who don’t always consider themselves disabled, such as Deaf and Blind folk. This month’s Voice to Books highlights these voices, because no one is able to express their stories, which are found in every community and culture, better than they do. Ellen Outside the Lines, by A. J. Sass Reviewed by Alexandra S.…
by Daniela Z. Montes Within These Wicked Walls, by Lauren Blackwood, is an Ethiopian retelling of Jane Eyre. The classic may be the inspiration, but Blackwood takes the bones and runs. We first meet the protagonist, Andromeda, in a carriage crossing the desert. The driver drops her off far away from her destination, but it is the closest he will get to the mansion owned by Magnus Rochester, who is cursed by the evil eye. Just as people in the real world ward offthe evil eye by wearing jewelry with the eye on it, debteras in Within These Wicked Walls…
Reviewed by Michael Medina Writers speaking on the topic of race or sexual orientation are habitually hypersensitive of how they portray minority groups, even when said writers are among those minorities, which can so often take away from the raw truth of a story. Casey Hamilton, however, doesn’t hold back, doesn’t edit uncomfortable truths in his characters or the minority groups they represent in his novel MENAFTER10. He portrays them honestly by giving the reader their intimate realities, the good, the bad, and the fabulous. Hamilton reminds us that his characters are unbearably human, which ultimately is what makes them…
By L.A. Hunt Monsters hide in plain sight in Cadwell Turnbull’s second novel, No Gods, No Monsters. At the midpoint, when crowds take to the streets to advocate for the rights of the newly discovered monsters, Turnbull writes, “Even in a cause that is stacked against them, no one is alone.” Turnbull deftly examines what it means to live life hiding secrets and the implications in deciding to reveal them. Turnbull allows one of the characters to explain the title of the novel as being “an evolution of an anarchist slogan: ‘No gods, no masters,’ the original version meaning…
In this month’s Voice to Books, we’re highlighting Native American authors and their stories. The colonized view of native people often mashes together diverse communities and nations into a misrepresented and false narrative of who they are. By giving space to their individual experiences, better representation and understanding can take place. The works listed below are as varied as the cultures they represent. A crime novel, a collection of nonfiction short stories, a memoir, and a YA novel show a small selection of the wide range of stories by Indigenous authors. Fire Song by Adam Garnet Jones Reviewed by Michael…
When most people think of horror, they may think of Stephen King or the bloody slasher movies from the ’80s. While these movies and books have made a lasting impression on the genre, they are often dominated by a straight white male view—demonizing and objectifying not only marginalized communities but cis het white women as well. But horror has many authors and storylines to share with readers beyond the straight white male. From those stories, horror is used to reflect on and discuss sensitive social and cultural issues. These reviews highlight women—POC and white—and their personal horrors that are intensified…
Graphic novels intertwine words and illustrations to allow their authors to say what they need to without descriptions. Their audiences don’t need to imagine their worlds; they can see them. Art and words are used strategically to tell stories. Simplicity and silence, lavish details, and verbose prose, or vice versa, tell these histories. The Black Panther Party: A Graphic Novel History by David F. Walker Reviewed by Pallavi Yetur Graphic novels contain multitudes. Comic book writer Alan Moore, who penned the groundbreaking Watchmen series-turned-graphic novel from 1986 to 1987, has lamented the term “graphic novel” as a marketing ploy devised…