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…

Kingdomtide, Rye Curtis’s debut novel, opens in a Vermont nursing home where Cloris Waldrip recounts the events following a plane wreck of twenty years earlier in Montana’s Bitterroot wilderness. After watching her husband and the pilot die, Cloris spends months wandering the woods, physically and emotionally lost. She promises that her “account should tell the…

Donna Miscolta’s new book Living Color: Angie Rubio Stories, a novel in stories, portrays the coming-of-age journey of Angie Rubio in witty prose that pays particular attention to smaller moments of discrimination, their impact, and the different ways Angie and her family members respond. It is a book that meets the national moment in which…

To write is to be isolated, or so goes the prevailing wisdom. Despite the feedback from teachers and peers; despite the conferences, workshops, and retreats with their offerings of solidarity and commiseration; despite the author/editor relationships without which many wonderful books would not exist — deep down, most of us recognize that most of the…

Prose poem, flash fiction, micro-fiction fragments, segmented miniaturist vignettes; whatever the label, the undergirding question of definition and categorization is: Can it survive in readers’ minds? Can it carve out space in literary memory, attain posterity, and become that thing people talk about when they allude to “pitch perfect” or “encapsulate” or “a portrait of…

Two young boys find a handgun in the woods, a fact that forever changes their lives. One of them, decades later, will take his own life. The other, who long ago had moved away from their hometown, will return to speak at the memorial service honoring Brownie, his childhood friend, in the “old crappy mill…

Millions of undocumented immigrants entered the U.S. as children. Known as “dreamers,” they are a largely hidden and often forgotten population. In the evening news, the dreamers’ collective story is frequently politicized, leaving a blind spot for the general public. Unless one knows someone in a dreamer’s situation, it can be difficult to understand the…