TCR Daily – Page 45 – The Coachella Review

Book Review: Nick Cutter’s “Little Heaven”

By eli ryder

New Mexico, 1965. Three seasoned killers converge on each other, then on a cult leader and a consuming force of darkness that threatens to overtake the world. Fresh, unflinching horror ensues. This is Nick Cutter’s Little Heaven. New Mexico is the perfect sparse setting for this modern take on classic westerns; outlaws, revenge, a maiden in distress, and a reverend that makes the most unhinged Pentecostal tongue-speaker feel perfectly sane all combine in a series of story beats Louis L’Amour would have found comfortably familiar, if he could stomach the visceral punches Cutter weaves throughout, a la Cormac McCarthy. Little Heaven’s New Mexico has “scratch-ass” towns with “straggle-ass” streets in which hired guns ask their targets, “Are you square with your creator?” before dispatching them to what lies beyond.

TCR Talks with T. Greenwood

By Chih Wang

T. Greenwood’s new novel, The Golden Hour, is a beautiful, haunting mystery folded into the personal drama of a woman finding her artistic truth. When she was thirteen, Wyn took a shortcut through the woods on her way home. What happened there would send Robby Rousseau to jail and forever mark her as a cautionary tale to other girls. Twenty years later, living next door to her ex-husband, Wyn is unhappily painting generic landscapes to pay the bills when she learns that new DNA evidence might set Robby free.

Book Review: C. W. Cannon’s “French Quarter Beautification Project”

February 18, 2017 Book Review TCR Daily The Coachella Review

By John Flynn-York

Wild, beautiful, bawdy, and vivid, C. W. Cannon’s new novel, French Quarter Beautification Project, is the song of one night on the streets and in the bars of New Orleans’ French Quarter, circa 1986. Waveland Rogers, known as “Buck” by all—“they call him Buck Rogers because of his repute for epic spaciness, a grand, sweeping, tremendous, but detailed spaciness”—is an aspiring composer who frequently drifts off into music-inspired reverie. He’s a server at Everybody’s Happy, a restaurant with themed tables and a costumed waitstaff, who jocularly call it “Nobody’s Here” due its lack of clientele. Buck wears a fedora and carries a whip, earning him another nickname, Louisiana Jones; his fellow servers include the buxom, randy Glory Ann, who dresses as Tinkerbell; a young guy known as Scrunge, who parades around as a lion; and Marciss, the manager, who takes his responsibilities lightly and is the occasional object of Buck’s skittering lust.

The Crossroads

February 9, 2017 Poetry TCR Daily The Coachella Review

By Danell Jones

Find yourself at crossroads
Stamp your feet
Shake the dust off your metaphor
Give thanks you are not Oedipus
Release your nightmares back to sleep

Tell a Story, Sell a Product

February 4, 2017 Plays TCR Daily The Coachella Review

By Brendon Smith Brendon Smith lives in Madison, Wisconsin with his lovely wife, creative son and annoying dog. He has had many of his one-acts produced, but this is the first one to be published.

Make Contact, Not War

January 28, 2017 TCR Daily The Coachella Review

BY MATTHEW DIBBERT

There seems to be a rule that a talented director will eventually make a bad movie. With so much that can go wrong with making a film, it’s almost inevitable. Paul Thomas Anderson made “Inherent Vice” (2014) and Susanne Bier made “Serena” (2014). So far, Denis Villeneuve has escaped this fate. His latest film, “Arrival,” does not reach the heights of his previous work, but it is nevertheless a quality picture.

Book Review: Roxane Gay’s “Difficult Women”

January 10, 2017 Book Review TCR Daily The Coachella Review

By Jenny Hayes

Roxane Gay’s Difficult Women is a relentless and thrilling read. As in much of Gay’s other work, particularly her novel An Untamed State, there is no looking away from brutality, yet moments of grace, beauty, and humor serve as striking counterparts to the more unsettling passages.

In these twenty-one stories, women negotiate problematic relationships, search for love and comfort, and try to cope with pain.

An Open Letter to the Art Collector Who Paid $17.2 Million for a Kneeling Hitler Sculpture

November 29, 2016 TCR Daily The Coachella Review

By Sharon Goldberg

Dear Art Collector:

Congratulations! The art world is all abuzz over your winning bid for Maurizio Cattelan’s “Him” at Christie’s recent “Bound to Fail” sale, a record-breaking sum for work by the famous artist. I personally wouldn’t spend $17.2 million for a nearly life-sized, wax and polyester resin effigy of Adolph Hitler, but I can see how a dictator or two might add to your caché among those folks who like art that pushes conventional boundaries.

Book Review: Rich Ferguson’s “New Jersey Me”

October 21, 2016 Book Review TCR Daily The Coachella Review

By Jenny Hayes

Rich Ferguson’s debut novel New Jersey Me is a coming-of-age tale set in an intriguingly dysfunctional ‘80s South Jersey town. The narrator, Mark, has a chaotic home life. His mother moved out of the house when he was fifteen, leaving him alone with his dad, a tough-talking, somewhat shady police chief, and the good things in his life are few and far between. He and his best friend Jimmy are even convinced they’re cursed by a “pet jinx” that causes all animals in their care to meet a premature demise. The two teens spend most of their time listening to music, getting wasted, and trying to have as good of a time as they can in Blackwater, a town Mark describes as “just strip malls, gun shops, radiation, and funeral homes.”

Slapping

August 2, 2016 Nonfiction TCR Daily The Coachella Review

BY BILL RATNER

I was nineteen, and it was a long time ago, and the only thing I really had to go on back then regarding courtship and intimacy was what my friends said was okay to do and how my parents had behaved long before that. The rumor was, my friend Terry and his girlfriend Caroline were slapping each other around in his dorm room at night, or at least Terry was slapping Caroline—as a thing—more than once. In my memory of it I’ve probably added the part where she slapped him back, because that way it would have at least been even. Caroline was beautiful. She wore backless gowns to the dorm parties and didn’t care how her hair looked. She and Terry were together all the time. I guess she loved him. Terry’s father was a preacher in a large southern town. Perhaps they were the slapping kind.