Commentary |
on Time Shelter, a novel by Georgi Gospodinov, translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel
“For a novel that’s intricately enmeshed with European history, it also feels deeply relevant to the situation the United States now finds itself in …”
Commentary |
on The Book of Goose, a novel by Yiyun Li
“The novel is haunted by dead babies, dead mothers, dead siblings, dead soldiers… Fabienne and Agnès recognize that this world has no interest in them, aside from their inevitable fate — to work, marry, quite possibly die in childbirth …”
Commentary |
Book Notes: on Mothercare by Lynne Tillman & Canción by Eduardo Halfon, translated by Lisa Dillman and Daniel Hahn
“Although Halfon wants us to feel the grip of history on our necks, his books aren’t pronunciamentos disguised as stories. His interest lies in how the remnants of family history influence one’s identity and manner of thought.”
Commentary |
on The Undercurrents: A Story of Berlin by Kirsty Bell
“The view from her kitchen window, which overlooks the nearby Landwehr Canal and a ‘patchwork of city history,’ begins to enchant her … a portal, an oracle, a more than literal opening.”
Commentary |
on Thank You For Not Reading, essays by Dubravka Ugrešić, translated from the Croatian by Celia Hawkesworth
“Ugrešić asserts that exiled writers often ‘adapt themselves to the image that they believe is expected of them’ by Western audiences, which hinges on victimhood and trauma. Yet there exists a different path, one that Ugrešić herself has chosen.”
Commentary |
on The Lascaux Notebooks by Jean-Luc Champerret, edited and translated by Philip Terry
“Terry challenges received ideas about the origins, nature and function of the lyric poem; the received poetic canon also becomes subject to radical revision. In short, Terry performs the role of the avant-garde artist.”
Commentary |
on Red and Black, a novel by Stendahl, translated by Raymond N. Mackenzie
“We’re fortunate not only to have been given yet another chance to enjoy Stendhal — but now in a mode that resonates with Anglophones.”
Commentary |
on Liar, poems by Jessica Cuello
“A book of many small tragedies — all the lives that never reached their full potential, whether from self-harm or harm inflicted by individuals who seemed to have no other way of interacting.
Commentary |
on Midwest Materials, photographs by Julie Blackmon
“She has a trained eye for children’s rambunctiousness, the way they eagerly claim and rework adult spaces, and the fear they can strike in mom and dad’s hearts … All of which gives her best photos a frisson of uncertainty.”
Commentary |
on How To Read Now, essays by Elaine Castillo
“She recalls being pressed by a white audience member to rattle off a list of must-read authors from the Philippines. That’s in keeping with a literary culture in which white readers turn minority writers into racial confessors, and treat their works less as works of literature and more as field reports, a ‘kind of ethical protein shake.'”
Commentary |
on Yield: The Journal of an Artist by Anne Truitt
“She realized that she had used her art ‘to contain my intensities’ so Truitt took up writing to understand just what those intensities were made of.”
Commentary |
on Floridas, photographs by Anastasia Samoylova and Walker Evans
“Both Evans and Samoylova sniff out Florida’s telltale, humid moldiness – while peering at what maintains itself as momentarily solid. But they don’t trade on facile contrasting binaries, or only on the glut and shock of Florida’s excessiveness.”
Commentary |
Book Notes: on Autobiographies of an Angel by Gábor Schein, translated by Ottilie Mulzet, and The Missing Word by Conchita DeGregorio, translated by Clarissa Botsford
Schein: “Hungary is inexorably sinking into its own lies, many centuries old. Arrogant ineptitude and feudal archetypes. And now has even become indifferent to its own self-destruction.”
Commentary |
on Pina, a novel by Titaua Peu, translated from the French by Jeffery Zuckerman
“An unflinching hammer-blow of a novel that reveals a country and a people struggling to confront the harsh reality of an abusive patriarchy and the brutal legacy of French colonialism.”
Commentary |
on Radical Art and the Formation of the Avant-Garde by David Cottington
“Cottington’s most subtle achievement is his meticulous analysis of an industry aborning, how savvy dealers and curators lined the pockets of painters against a backdrop of the Franco-Prussian War and Baron Haussmann’s urban transformation of Paris.”