The title of Tommy Wieringa’s novel, The Death of Murat Idrissi, reveals its tragic ending: Murat, the Moroccan protagonist, will die. You know this. Yet you wait in heightened anticipation for what will happen next. The novel reads like a short story but packs such a punch that the reader is left gasping, overwhelmed by…

During my undergrad creative writing degree, students tended to pigeonhole, to narrow themselves down creatively. A student would read a piece of genre-fluid work only to hear, in that vulnerable afterglow, a response like, “Well, this is poetry, and as a prose writer, I can’t really comment.” I’m sure I did it, too, fearing to…

To be conquered is to be defeated, beaten, vanquished, crushed. The eight stories in Veronica Montes’ chapbook The Conquered Sits at the Bus Stop, Waiting are peopled by characters overwhelmed in some manner — by grief, by the desire to be seen, by the ceaseless march of time, by aging. But although Montes’ characters may…

Edendale, the first novel from Jacquelyn Stolos, takes place in Los Angeles during wildfire season and follows four roommates as small transgressions escalate into unforgivable ones. It is a tale of environmental horror in every sense of the phrase, charting ecological collapse alongside the collapse of a social microclimate: as the friends’ dynamic warps under…

The Invention of Love, Sara Schaff’s second short story collection, is a meditation on the messiness of love, art, and belonging in women’s lives. Schaff is fascinated by the journey of female identity — its origin, development, and influences. Eager to find out where they fit and how they’ll flourish, the women in Schaff’s collection…

The stories and novella of JD Scott’s Moonflower, Nightshade, All the Hours of the Day might be called fabulist, literary, millennial, parable-ish, or bildungsroman, but, as soon as the collection seems pin-able, another enchanting element surfaces. Scott’s range and rhythms delight. In one story, an insomniac narrator ruminates on the nature of reality via Wile…

We are enamoured with talking animals. In literature they have been there from the beginning, tempting Adam and Eve, guiding children through fairy tales, befriending Christopher Robin. The dream of communicating with other animals follows us out of childhood, from stuffed toys and Disney regicides to Orwell’s rich pigs and proletariat mules. How does a…

Why do we read fiction? To escape what we dislike about our lives? To defy what we deem culturally, spiritually, technically, physically, or morally unjust? To examine objects, people, and situations so closely that we are able not only to see the worlds they contain, but also to step inside them? The answer is, of…

We are taught that the American Dream is attainable, that its pursuit is exciting and will inevitably bear fruit. But what of the American protagonist who suffers internally? Whose daily battles don’t take place in a courtroom or on Wall Street but in a humble department store? A farm in Naugatuck Valley? An elementary school…

Who among us can honestly say that on occasion (or rather more often) we haven’t treated our parents like complete and utter shits? Even setting aside the toddling tyrant years from 0 to 5, when un-reflexive solipsism is built in, the parent-child bond tends to be something of a one-way street well into adulthood. And,…

Philippe Djian’s 2017 novel Marlene, translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti, is a tragedy centered on three ex-army veterans in their late thirties who have returned from service together in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen and are trying to pick up the pieces of their lives. The action takes place in a fictional geographic space,…

Some of our editors share a few books read in 2020 that we’re still thinking about at the end of the year. + Diane Josefowicz, book reviews editor This year I gravitated toward books that gave shape to my dismay at our national shrug in the face of a grave and immediate existential threat. In…