Two genres set my reading heart aflutter: novels in verse (highly ironic as I am an utter poetry dullard) and interlinked short storied novels. Hapa Hawaiian native Letitia Moffit’s Sidewalk Dancing falls in the latter category ...
Each of Tom Cho's 18 stories in his just-over 100-page-debut is a surprise waiting to happen to you. Already lauded and awarded in Cho's native Australia, his Stateside arrival is sure to elicit gasps, guffaws, and more. Welcome to half a century of pop culture icons – before you...
"For any serious artist, it is a terrible feeling of surrender when you realize there is no place in the world for your voice, when all that you express seems marginalized or in vain ...
*STARRED REVIEW What is most haunting in Kupersmith's nine multi-layered pieces are not the specters, whose tales are revealed as stories within stories, but the lingering loss and disconnect endured by the still living. With an American father and a Vietnamese "former boat refugee" mother, the...
* STARRED REVIEW Recipient of the James Joyce, Prix Courrier International, and Premio Grinzane Cavour awards for novels such as To Live (adapted to film by director Zhang Yimou) and Brothers, shortlisted for the 2008 Man Asian Prize, Yu Hua is an international sensation. His latest...
To put a word so violent as Executioner next to a muzak-soundtrack-inducing subtitle like Love Stories, on a cover sporting a cutesy, heart-shaped tiger's tail is exactly the sort of unsettling experience you can expect from Rajesh Parameswaran's uniquely original debut story collection. Animals take control of their narratives...
For fans of Aravind Adiga's unforgettable 2008 Booker Prized first novel, The White Tiger, who were perhaps not as enthralled with his 2011 follow-up, Last Man in Tower, might I suggest you look backward a few more years to his very first book? Introduced to eager readers just after Adiga's Booker...
So first off, I read backwards (see yesterday's post) ...
Edward P. Jones takes up little space on library shelves. Over the last 20+ years, he's published three books: two story collections and a single novel. Proving the adage 'quality over quantity,' Jones' awards are considerably more extensive, from the PEN/Hemingway Award for his first...
If the name Lauren Groff sounds familiar, that might be because her latest title, Arcadia, appears on oh-so-many Best-of-2012 lists. I admit I haven't yet read Arcadia (it's high in my 'must-read' pile), but if I have the option among an author's titles, short stories are usually my first choice. Just...
What are the chances ...
Thus far, mega-award winning Junot Díaz (also recently bestowed the "Genius" moniker by the MacArthur Foundation) hasn't written a book without his sort-of autobiographical stand-in Yunior de las Casas. Díaz's 1996 fiction debut, Drown, introduced Yunior through interlinked short stories; a decade-plus later, Díaz turned over full narrative control to his...
Maybe it's the craziness of the season, but I've really been appreciating short story collections. This latest title from Emma Donoghue – the author of the phenomenal Room – is an intriguingly composed compilation: Donoghue presents a story introduced with a specific city and year, then gives the 'ripped-from-the-headlines'...
Given the monumental (continuous) changes post-Arab Spring, my recent (ongoing) search for women’s voices before and after led me to an unusual writer who defies many expectations of what it means to be internationally literary: Alifa Rifaat lives and works in a traditional Egyptian Muslim...
In spite of quite the impressive creative output including on the page (books, graphic novels, articles) and on celluloid (as both writer and director), I discovered Etgar Keret because of a house – the narrowest house (four feet at its widest!) in the world, wedged...
How wrenchingly ironic that this was the book I happened to be reading when I learned of a sudden death in our family. On the flight, in the car, during the rare moments of aloneness over the last four days, Kazuo Ishiguro's stories that spoke...
How strange to admit that Dave Eggers taught me Eugène Ionesco – Mr. Theatre of the Absurd himself – wrote kiddie stories in addition to his dozens of plays (Rhinoceros, The Chairs, The Bald Soprano, being some of his signature pieces). Eggers founded McSweeney's which recently debuted McMullens,...
Charles Yu's stories are indescribable. Really. Every time I picked up this recent collection, my face broke out in a goofy, uncertain grin, because I was totally unsure of what I might encounter next. Here's what I can tell you ...
Thankfully, 'sophomore slump' is not part of Tania James’ vocabulary. In fact, her second book is even better than her 2009 debut novel Atlas of Unknowns. And as rare as consistency can be in collections, James manages to sustain an unwavering level of resonating quality throughout each of the...
Eric Gamalinda and I overlapped in New York City in the 1990s, when I knew (of) him more as a poet. I should know better (blame it on youth!) than to label him by genre, because clearly Gamalinda is a multi-faceted writer (as well as a playwright,...
