On September 11th, 2001, Nell Rifkin finally got to talk to Fay Vasquez-Rabinowitz. That’s not the most important thing that...
Can you ever really know someone else? The cliche is you can’t know someone until you’ve walked in their shoes. Perhaps that’s true. But does that mean you don’t know your partner? Will you ever? And if one wanted to, what would it take to get there? Read More
Many writers try, but few capture, as Brandon Taylor does, the aesthetic texture of life under late capitalism in America: its petty cruelties, chewy atmospheres, and taut social relations. More expansive in terms of scope and characterization than his debut, Real Life – in which we view life mainly through the lens of a single protagonist – The Late Americansmakes a tour into, through, and between the lives of a band of troubled souls living in an Iowa college town. Read More
Miah Jeffra's American Gospel (Black Lawrence Press, $ 26.95) questions the idea of the American dream in a braided novel that weaves together how race, sexuality, gender, and class are affected when a developer begins displacing a neighborhood in a bid to make an amusement park. The novel is told in three voices, Peter Cryer, a queer mixed-race teenager navigating love and desire; Ruth Anne, his Irish Appalachian mother living in fear of domestic abuse by her estranged partner; and Thomas, a teacher and brother at the private Catholic school where Peter attends on scholarship. The three perspectives reveal an America struggling to find itself in the wake of commercialism, addiction, and toxicity. In each case, powerlessness leads to violence; this overarching theme of Gospel spans gender, sexuality, race, and class, as nearly every character or institution is affected by conditions created by white-collar corruption. Read More
Queer life in New York City has always lent itself well to poets. From established voices like Eileen Myles to newer ones like Kay Gabriel or Maggie Milliner, the rhythms and dynamics of life lend themselves well to verse. And now Cat Fitzpatrick, an editor, co-publisher of LittlePuss Press and poet, has gently satirized the Brooklyn queer scene in her new book The Call-Out, available now from Seven Stories Press. Read More
For the same reason that I like slashers— they could realistically happen if you forgive superhuman strength in the case of some of the killers in the Scream franchise and are primarily driven by interpersonal drama— I enjoy thrillers. Books that seek to shock and surprise. When done well, these books take plausible scenarios like a missing wife, the discovery of a lost and forgotten body, or the scintillating reveal of a seemingly good person who did a bad thing and turn them into an emotional rollercoaster. And Kelly J. Ford does a thriller right. Read More
In the title story of Phantom Advances, Mary Lynn Reed’s debut short story collection, the teenage narrator looks at her mother through the viewfinder of a manual camera as her mother drives. They’ve just gone to the narrator’s grandparents to ask for help, because her mother, a habitual liar, has lost another job; they’re returning home with money. But though the narrator’s finger clicks the shutter and the machine tries to advance the film, the camera isn’t loaded — there will be no record of this moment. Read More
What do you get when you mix a poetic writer with the mystery genre? More metaphors than you can shake...
Germany’s greatest 20th century writer, Thomas Mann, is the subject of a new novel from Colm Tóibín. Tóibín is the author of the widely...