RaveBook SlutPierce juxtaposes science and faith, and his stories show how they share a desire to explain and label the world ... Hall of Small Mammals is a skilled collection of explorations on what it means to believe. Pierce teases faith and science out into myriad scenarios, and highlights our principal desire to put our belief into worldviews that make sense of what we see. Each story is a journey into a different kind of observation. Hall of Small Mammals shows us that it might be our need to explain which makes us most human.
Leslie Jamison
RaveBookslutThe Empathy Exams is polished, interesting, and compelling. Jamison pokes so deeply into the idea of empathy that she is able to raise questions about empathy we wouldn\'t expect. She puts herself on the examination table; her medical and intellectual wounds are here for our consideration. She writes with honesty and openness to critique. If empathy is setting our own discomfort to allow the feelings or symptoms of others to become our feelings, too, than entering into an empathetic contract with Jamison is a worthwhile exercise. These are essays that challenge and provoke, affirm and affect.
Jesús Carrasco
PositiveLas Vegas WeeklyCarrasco’s story leaves its reader intentionally in the dark for a long time: Just what was the incident that turned the boy’s family against him? Was his crime so terrible that he should die in a drought-plagued landscape? What are the motives of the goatherd? … Carrasco’s stark prose (translated from Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa) and the austere wisdom of the goatherd evoke the writing of Cormac McCarthy. Out in the Open relies on the best elements of classic westerns to pull its readers through a bitter landscape; Carrasco’s take is darker than you’d imagine, and full of surprise.
