MixedHarvard ReviewOne begins a new Haruki Murakami book with high expectations...the strange radiance of his work and his tendency to present mysteries or puzzles with no solutions. These elements are certainly on display in his new story collection, First Person Singular, but the dominant mode here is memory. In this collection, an older narrator goes sifting through the events of his past, some of them surreal and unexplainable. Often, in the middle of a story, a memory will trigger another memory, through a sort of mnemonic leap; the result can be like a confusingly drawn map that means more to the creator than the reader ... There is an enchanting array of material ... There is also, at times, a calculated and somewhat peevish anticipation of criticism or interpretation ... Murakami also challenges readers’ sensibilities with \'Carnaval,\' which unfortunately never rises above its crass opening (though it aspires to) ... This story could rightfully be compared with \'On a Stone Pillow,\' which starts out as a tale of a one-night stand with a woman whose face and name he can’t remember, but then manages to open up into a beautiful, sensitive meditation on her poetry. (She sent him a small, self-published book after the encounter.) Here, as ever, Murakami soars most when he circles around the central \'theme\' of this collection[.]
Jenny Offill
RaveHarvard ReviewJenny Offill’s voice in Weather stays in your bones and invades your thought patterns long after the book is set aside. She writes in short dispatches, describing everyday occurrences and numinous moments alike in only a few lines. The effect is not fragmentation, however, but cumulative awareness and understanding ... Lizzie’s flaws and her empathy draw us close to her, and in many ways this is a book about how the mind of a sensitive, astute underachiever sustains itself in a time of political and environmental crisis. Despite its brevity—the novel is barely 200 pages—Weather is a work you want to linger over and live with for a long time. It is also the kind of work that, like most truly great novels, will resonate differently with different readers.
Will Mackin
RaveHarvard Review...there is a hard, clear surface to the events in these stories, which often come off like reporting or arc-less episodes that elude interpretation ... Mackin’s stories often open up into brief, flashing moments of strangeness and wonder ... the reader is struck simultaneously by the human connection and the lack of it ... Bring Out the Dog is a strikingly original debut, and Mackin’s predecessors, if any, are Tim O’Brien’s Going After Cacciato and Donald Barthelme’s \'The Sargeant\' ... all three of these writers are remarkable for their uncanniness and originality. For their brilliance, as well.
