The Things We Do That Make No Sense, Adam Schuitema’s second story collection, begins with a passage from one of Andre Dubus’ most famous stories, “A Father’s Story”: “For ritual allows those who cannot will themselves out of the secular to perform the spiritual, as dancing allows the tongue-tied man a ceremony of love.” This…

Near Haven opens with a confession from Sir Isaac Newton: “I can calculate the motion of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.” Matthew Stephen Sirois’s debut novel is split into four parts, and each begins with an apt epigraph. In due time, the Newton line proves to be a perfect overture for…

A word of warning: Aberrant is not for the faint of heart. If the man-eating plant from Little Shop of Horrors brings back unsettling memories, know that Marek Šindelka’s debut novel has something much darker in store. Rich and atmospheric, it comes as no surprise that Šindelka, already an award-winning poet in the Czech Republic,…

Eugine Lim’s third novel, Dear Cyborgs, is born into a climate of social and political unrest. Following the 2016 US Presidential Election, millions of Americans, and millions more around the world, have marched in protest against Donald Trump and his administration. It can’t be denied that these demonstrations have waned in the subsequent months. Still,…

Language and imagery of great originality are the most striking aspects of Melissa Fraterrigo’s Glory Days. Centered on the imaginary town of Ingleside, Nebraska, as it undergoes disruption and transition, the novel illuminates the broken lives that result from being cut off from the land and the once-vibrant farming and ranching culture that formed the…

Christos Chrissopoulos’s The Parthenon Bomber, a novella originally published in Greek in 2010, is about a criminal act and is structured like a case file. While the file includes information about the perpetrator (a troubled loner referred to only by his initials Ch.K), testimony from people who knew or observed him, a manifesto written by his…

Garréta, a member of Oulipo and author of the award-winning novel, Sphinx, begins with a question—what should she do to keep her readers engaged while they are waiting on her next novel? She creates a challenge for herself, to write something different. She conceives of a series of confessional essays based solely on her memories of women she…

And Then is the latest novella from Brooklyn-based writer and fiction editor of the Brooklyn Rail, Donald Breckenridge. The book presents itself as a collage of interwoven stories concerned with how our lives intersect in strange and sometimes esoteric ways, and how the past is never that far behind. And Then is a taut meditation…

The book begins in childhood, as a guileless girl runs out the door with her pocket money, passing a slouched, drunk neighbor on the stairs. When she returns, the man is surrounded by figures in white coats, a blood-soaked hat sits abandoned next to his lifeless body, and his “chance for a new day” is…

The dictionary presents two basic definitions of “weight”—one (the noun) concerned with mass, and the other (the verb) meaning to place importance on something. We weigh in with our opinions and weigh our options. Weights are both things that pin us down and things we must pick up and lug around. Buried within the word…

The debut from Publishers Weekly fiction reviews editor Gabe Habash, Stephen Florida, is different from so many other contemporary novels. Those differences will inevitably turn off some readers, but if you’d enjoy an intense dive into the consciousness of a vile yet fascinating narrator, this is your book. Dark, engrossing, and unendingly weird, Stephen Florida is a tribute to the…

João Gilberto Noll died this March at the age of 70. Widely known (at least for a writer of fiction) in his native Brazil, Noll’s reputation is only beginning to be made in the Anglophone world. Two Lines Press has just published a translation of his 1989 novel Hotel Atlântico. That book, along with a…