It is most effective when it dwells on the sad influence of history, on personal tragedy, on the banality of evil and cruel indifference.
Ted Kehoe
Fuse Book Review: Living Well is not the Same as Being Good—Jim Harrison’s “The Ancient Minstrel”
Jim Harrison’s prose is gorgeous, illuminating. The simple language slides into your head and resonates there.
Fuse Book Review: Towering Rage and Bottomless Mirth—Jonathan Franzen’s “Purity”
My biggest gripe is with a central tenet of Jonathan Franzen’s fiction: communication between generations is impossible.
Book Review: “Half an Inch of Water” — Nine Stories that Peer Memorably into Eternity
One of the hardest things to do as a writer of contemporary fiction is to create characters who are good.
Book Review: “Young Skins” – The Precariousness of Even a Timid Existence
The events Colin Barrett renders in Young Skins have the texture of life, albeit the darker side, in that they puzzle and disturb and linger painfully.
Book Review: “Happy Are the Happy” — You Can’t Get There from Here
Yasmina Reza’s dollhouse of a novel is a miniaturist’s miracle.
Book Review: Charles D’Ambrosio’s “Loitering” — Slam-Bang Ghost Stories
Charies D’Ambrosio’s short fiction collections were finalists for major awards, but it is his essays that I return to again and again.
Book Review: Merritt Tierce’s Smart and Ruthless “Love Me Back” — The Way We Live Now
So much of what this novel has to say feels bracing and necessary. This is where a good part of America lives—dangling over a chasm.