PositiveLos Angeles Review of BooksGalchen leaves it up to the reader to distinguish what she’s culled from actual records from what’s merely fiction. The fact that it’s impossible to do so speaks not only to Galchen’s deft ear for historical voice, but also shows how the difference between truth and falsehood (or, in current terms, between \'real\' and \'fake news\') has always been a point of contention ... Galchen is thorough in producing all of the evidence against Katharina, most of it flimsy hearsay ... By moving between chapters of interior observation to excerpts of townsfolk’s testimony, Galchen creates a rhythm that keeps an otherwise straightforward story engaging. As a witch hunt narrative, Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch doesn’t cover entirely new terrain ... But on the levels of form and technique, Galchen’s choral approach elevates the novel and frames Katharina’s ordeal as a timeless example of how smart, independent women are routinely silenced and suppressed ... On its surface, it might seem like a soft landing for an author known for...wild, creative twists ... But the lack of a resounding finale also lends this historical tale a refreshing realism, bridging the expanse that separates the early 1600s from today.
Kevin Nguyen
PositivePloughsharesNguyen shepherds the growth of his sloppy protagonist, and the private, lonely life he leads as someone in mourning, with depth, understanding, and self-awareness ... Nguyen’s work as a longtime editor....shines through in his writing, with storytelling kept close to the ground, an eye for detail that enhances and doesn’t overcrowd, and plotting that turns subtly enough to keep the prose moving ... While dissecting racial transgressions and identity, Nguyen lets his characters grow in their self-awareness when it comes to overstepping or overlooking bias, consistently reinforcing the idea that it takes effort to recognize one’s innate prejudices, and that not everyone is equally aware ... Nguyen’s ambitious debut is a mash-up of reflection, growth, and rumination on death. In a world that seems increasingly chaotic and divided, Nguyen offers a refuge with his humble, distinct take on race relations in America, and smart analysis of the ways technology shape our personal and public lives.
Jessica Anthony
RaveLos Angeles Review of Books... a bombastic, stylized, brief (perhaps too brief) examination of the inner workings of a gay thirtysomething Republican ... propulsive and blunt ... Anthony manages to show us what makes Alexander tick, as well as hold up a funhouse mirror to our own political media in the age of spin ... bluntness effortlessly moves the narrative, even when we’re offered real insight into Alexander ... Throughout, Anthony uses her razor-sharp sense of wit to organically ground Alexander’s awfulness in prose, and wring out both irony and loathing for him ... The book’s greatest achievement may very well be its exacting dissection of Republican homosexuality in connection to avarice and the Republican Party’s ideals ... the ending, unfortunately, seems abrupt and ambiguous ... Still, even in its abruptness, there is something earned about the conclusion, as if there’s hope for Alexander to mature, even if he tries to cling to the artifice that made him such a political force in the first place.
Jess Row
PositiveThe Washington Post... earnest and ranging ... At times, Row loses grasp of his focus, and flits into seemingly meandering reflections on religious and existential concerns, but when he anchors his thinking to how white writers have created white utopias in their work, and how that work showcases larger cultural issues of exclusion and a seeming disinterest in nuanced representation, he’s brilliant and insightful ... Row performs the same thoughtful exhumation of white writing again and again ... Row ultimately accomplishes his goal of raising \'the possibility of a new method.\' Now it’s up to the larger writing community to translate his plea into action.
Halle Butler
PositiveLos Angeles Review of BooksButler has proved herself to be a capable chronicler of thirtysomething anxiety, depression, and life-happiness negotiation ... Millie, a 30-year-old office temp struggles to compromise between her dreams of economic security and the low-grade depression she’d have to live with to achieve such a goal. Struggling with this compromise causes Millie’s own depression to show through, and Butler’s nuanced handling of that is what makes her one of the more enriching protagonists to read about this year.
Kristen Roupenian
PositiveThe Millions\"Instead of writing about the search for the self via combustibility, Roupenian writes about the female perspective from a different vantage point: How do women control the lives of their friends, lovers, and selves not out of fear, but out of necessity—be it selfish or in the service of good? How do they take control of the stories they live, especially in a world where men threaten to dominate? ... Unlike the jump into the great unknown her peers force their characters to make, Roupenian lets her creations vie for a control that will break their hearts. In her estimation, it’s not about what we want, but how often that blinds us to the powers we have, and to the powers acting upon us. It’s important to read characters who are burning down their lives and searching for answers to unknowable questions. But Roupenian reminds us that these things come with a cost. And that there’s a value in knowing oneself, even if that self isn’t a version you like or need.\
Ottessa Moshfegh
PositivePloughsharesIn Ottessa Moshfegh’s latest novel, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, she uses the optimism of new-millennium New York to explore isolation, cultural emptiness, and the complexity of female friendships in a biting and detailed way ... In Moshfegh’s no-bullshit approach, female friendship is scrutinized not to find genuine affection but to recognize how different personalities can embolden one’s ability to give into their emotional addictions ... Moshfegh is deliberate in the pacing of her exploration of the complicated friendships adult women can have, leading the novel to play out like Donald Antrim’s The Hundred Brothers in both its handling of relationships and its ability to sustain interest despite repetition and a small-scale approach to setting.
Alex Gilvarry
PositivePloughsharesStarting with Eastman at rest, the novel takes an existential, and at times psychological approach to examining male literary power, and the destructive ego it can create. Throughout the novel, Gilvarry makes it clear that his greatest skills as a writer are conjuring sympathy, and clearing a path for his protagonist to earn it ... While it’s ultimately unfortunate that Channing wasn’t explored as deeply as Eastman, Gilvarry uses her as an envoy for exploring the politics of the war ... Reading Eastman was Here is a pleasure, but those familiar with literary fiction might recognize similarities between it and Jonathan Safran Foer’s messy effort, Here I Am. Both deal with the trajectory of a failed marriage, a desperate, egotistical male writer, a country at war, and an attempt to find oneself by engaging with the struggle. Both are about acceptance of change, however hard won. Yet, Gilvarry manages to accomplish what Foer merely aspires to: a sense of revelation, however minor. In focusing on the interior life of a man in crisis, Gilvarry is able to speak to not just the plight of white intellectualism in the 60s, but to the beauty that can be found at the end of an existential crisis, at the end of middle age. His protagonist shines, even as he reluctantly fades into obscurity, allowing more daring writers to have a seat at the table.
Adam Johnson
MixedThe RumpusUnlike his universally beloved The Orphan Master’s Son, Adam Johnson’s new work, Fortune Smiles, is an uneven output. Its six short pieces range from brilliant tales of pain and struggle, to more rote pieces focusing on adrift Koreans and former Stasi guards refusing to acknowledge their crimes, to downright bizarre metafiction about marriage, writing, and disease ... Johnson, a master of the slow-boil reveal, allows his characters to naturally progress to a place where their hard-won decisions seem like necessity, not mere choice.
