When Maggie Nelson and Harry Dodge fell in love it was a love irrevocable, shot through with want and give, “feral with vulnerability.” During the wild time of first falling she and Harry (writer and artist) discussed the conundrum of inexpressibility: “We argued and argued on this account, full of fever, not malice. Once we name something, you said, we can never see it the same way again.” But this is not dire; this is…
In Christie Watson’s Where Women are Kings, sometimes love cannot conquer all. Sometimes love is not a beautiful savior, but destined self-destruction disguised as selflessness. Watson’s characters are not written as victims of their environment, but rather victims of their own demons. Certainly, the subject of angels and demons and the overall influence of religious ideology is a pulsating theme throughout the novel. The heart of this affecting narrative is Elijah, a seven-year-old Nigerian boy…
I don’t usually write book reviews, but Una LaMarche’s Like No Other was such a fun read that I was happy to examine it more closely. Like No Other is a great YA contemporary romance. Devorah and Jaxon meet when they get stuck in a hospital elevator together. As they start talking, they discover that they not only share interests but also live on the same street in Brooklyn. (Ed. Note -- "For six…
When I interviewed Patricia Lockwood for the Rumpus, she said of her then-forthcoming book Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals, “No one even wants poetry to sound like this, but now it does.” Her thousands of fans would not agree, but certain reviewers, it turns out, would. Adam Plunkett for the New Yorker’s website and Jonathan Farmer for the Slate Book Review both regard the book in part as a roundabout way of mocking people like them.
