Warnings from the Future is the first collection of stories from Ethan Chatagnier. Despite the vivid title, it is not a succession of screeds from an apocalyptic wasteland. In fact, the collection does not adhere to a consistent mode, and as such avoids becoming monotonous. Regionalism is also not strongly emphasized. Fresno, California appears as…

Flash fiction has flourished since the publication of Sudden Fiction in 1983, which included stories no longer than 1,500 words. In 1986, Jerome Stern challenged fiction writers to compress their stories further when he launched The World’s Best Short-Short Story Contest at Florida State University, which limited entries to 250 words. “Trying to write a…

On a list of undervalued American fiction writers, Valerie Trueblood’s name would surely be at the top. Within a decade she’s published a novel and three fantastic collections that showcase a unique and vibrant style. In her fourth collection — Terrarium: New and Selected Stories — highlights from her previous books appear alongside fresh work…

I was a teenager in the late 80’s and early 90’s, when AIDS became a prominent part of the American news cycle. I remember the panic and fear. The campaigns on television and the assemblies in high school simultaneously promoting abstinence and condom use. Rampant misinformation, fueled by prejudice and wild rumors, filled the vacuum…

Floating Notes by Babak Lakghomi is in equal parts sure-footed and disorienting. Beyond simply telling a story, the experimental thriller works to involve the reader in the experience of paranoia. In 100 pages, segmented in short bursts of language, Lakghomi creates an immersive text that grapples with absurdity and alienation. The narrative is remincient of…

Eventide: the title in English of this excellent third novel by Swedish author Therese Bohman is literary, poetic, old-fashioned. It carries an echo of the hymn tune of that name (associated with the hymn of longing Abide with me), perhaps paralleling the reference in the original to Pär Lagerkvist’s Aftonland (set to music by Arne…

Adela Frost is the millennial you love to hate. The eighteen-year-old recent high school graduate has one eye on the thing she’s doing and the other on how doing it will seem on Facebook. Life for Adela, in the early chapters of Rosalie Metro’s debut novel, Have Fun in Burma, is more a performance for…

Most books are like planets. However beautiful and intricate and admirable, they still feel finite and self-contained. Knowable when enjoyed with a reader’s careful interest. Some books, though, are more like galaxies. They contain a vast expanse of moving parts that, while often associated, are not directly connected. And like the planets and stars held…

The new book Monster Portraits, published in a beautiful, slim volume by Rose Metal Press, consists of a collection of written vignettes by Sofia Samatar, which are based on series of drawings, the monster portraits of the title, by her brother Del Samatar. Readers might expect the pieces included in such a book to be…

Never Anyone But You is the story of the lives of two French intellectuals, who lived together in Nantes, Paris and on the island of Jersey between 1917 and 1954: Lucie Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe. Both were artists, better known as Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. The story is told through the eyes and voice…

An ocean or a desert fills the horizon. Its undulations break across some tiny inhabited quarter. People actually come here for their own enjoyment. They will get little of any such thing, in this so called resort, with its weed choked lots and poorly furnished rooms. They argue instead. They fuck on dingy beds. They…

I’ve been dipping in and out of Geert Mak’s mammoth In Europe (translated by Sam Garrett) for the past couple of months. Crisscrossing the continent, Mak follows many strands of the twentieth century: what led to conflicts and what resolved them; which cities were in ascendance and which in decline; what forces rippled across the…