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Recent Reviews
Rebekah Bergman
Positive Full Stop \"Bergman’s novel raises some big existential questions: how does a person preserve their life after death? Should we dare to try? Trying might cause us to become consumed by the pursuit and miss the experience of life itself. Instead, Bergman relentlessly argues that sharing life with those around us is what matters most. Memories exist for other people after those who made them leave or pass away. It’s tempting to read Bergman’s novel as in favor of the romantic preservation of the past exemplified by the Museum of Human History and against the hubris of preserving for the future. But the novel is asking another question. In the face of centuries and epochs, we retain so little. Is there a third option—neither romantic nor technocratic—for holding onto the past? It would be reductive to say that The Museum of Human History wants us to “live in the present,” but in many ways this is what her characters glimpse when they truly encounter one another.\
Victoria Kielland, trans. Damion Searls
Rave On the Seawall Kielland generally adheres to the arc of Gunness’ real life, springing from it to illustrate what an obsession can do to a person ... Kielland astonishes through an impressive ability to convey how choices compound and become unbearable to one’s inner life — abetted by Damion Searls’ painstakingly careful translation.
Noreen Masud
Rave Chicago Review of Books The complexities of Masud’s highly controlled and abusive childhood are brought into focus from the start but skews dwelling on it, choosing instead to highlight what came after. Her sharp words and mind cut through the chaff of what commonly bloats memoirs ... The structure of A Flat Place is striking, diverging from a conventional methodology ... Her words twist and wrap around various concepts, at times in the same paragraph, challenging the reader to take her work as a whole, rather than pin it down for dissection. The concerns of her work, while innately personal and self-refectory, retain a global scope ... The hauntology that pervades these insights and the book as a whole is heavy but does not overwhelm. These feelings and circumstances continually drive her back into the wilderness, the flat plains, in order to work through them. It is only in all of these spaces she can process and connect to that which is the most broken. This combines as a challenge to the reader, although Masud is not intentionally issuing one.
Sarah Blake
Pan Ancillary Review of Books ... the prose feels almost too clean. Izabel is honest and transparent with the reader, but is without any true volition, as if she clearly knows what is coming next. Her wants and desires are never filtered, but are given to the reader without a struggle, never overly conflicted. The anthropomorphizing of the trees as if to reflect a \'better humanity\' is a strange addition. It remains only a tease, since despite the revelation of the trees having such a deep self awareness, it does not inherently change the characters or world. The story ends in a neat package, with various subplots summed up in a few pages, as if Blake wanted to avoid a more complicated or ambiguous denouement.
Sequoia Nagamatsu
Positive The Chicago Review of Books We might feel stretched to read another tale of a viral scourge, but this mosaic novel tackles a decades-long pandemic from different perspectives and angles ... These threads are artfully woven together and unraveled through Nagamatsu’s expert plotting. There are sharp moments of levity ... Yet it is hard to extricate the current moment from this novel, and in some ways, it feels as exhausting as HBO’s Station Eleven, which shares a lot of the same features of this book. Nagamatsu’s unique vision, his Japanese heritage come through with several characters based in Japan, and how the pandemic is approached there rather than the glimpses we see in the United States is stark. The plague doesn’t cause the world to collapse in this novel—at least not physically—society instead adapts for better and worse ... Nagamatsu’s attention to character is incredibly intimate. Each section stars a new individual and consists of an arc much like a short story or novelette, and readers are drawn into their lives immediately, experiencing each memory of their loved ones as they unpack regrets and grief ... There are a number of viscerally difficult storylines present in the novel, especially around the suffering of children ... For some readers, a startling blind spot for a narrative that is as thorough as this may be the minimal faith or spiritual dimension of the book ... Nagamatsu’s work succeeds at resonating on many personal levels. The mosaic nature of the story deepens the empathy as the reader comes into contact with dozens of characters, whose lives may or may not intersect later in various ways. Their struggles are our struggles and our losses are their losses. It engenders the kind of compassion that we desperately need, but it also causes us to reflect and dwell on our own grief, loss and regret. None of that will go away. None of it will weigh any less. None of it will hurt less. Ultimately, this novel encourages us that we can endure if we only attempt to join others in community. I hope we can carry How High We Go In The Dark’s underlying optimism with us into 2022 and beyond.
Octavia Cade
Rave Chicago Review of Books The reader is hammered with...accusations, especially for a book that could be read in a single sitting. The onslaught of pain and sorrow of what could have been, what the world cannot return to, radiates from these passages. Cade’s background in science communication gives Ruby her distinct (read: empirical) point of view and feelings of disbelief, but also provides a thorough analysis of organisms and biological systems throughout the narrative. The sensibilities of understanding various organisms alive, copied, and extinct are delicious treats for the biologically-minded. Yet, these factors, which could have easily become obstacles in a hard science fiction novel, never get in the way of the poignant story, which is certainly a message for our times ... Cade pushes climate fiction deeper, asking the reader to reflect, consider, and repent. A heavy, but necessary read, The Impossible Resurrection of Grief pushes us to continue to question our motives and our positions in the climate crisis.