PositiveThe Portland Mercury... lends itself to a particular kind of reader. Christle is known as a poet, and this is her first work of prose, but while the book is similar to other creative-nonfiction prose books by poets—like Sarah Manguso’s Ongoingness, Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, and Brian Blanchfield’s Proxies—The Crying Book feels looser and less concerned with narrative ... Outside of the research, the book’s most striking moments are when Christle sounds like a poet—where she mixes the sadness of her subject matter with a playful and surprising freedom on the page.
Leslie Jamison
PositiveThe MillionsThere are so many ways that a follow-up can disappoint and, as great as it is, Make It Scream, Make It Burn will surely disappoint some ... Jamison is an expert at restraint. She often holds her opinions back to let her readers come to their own conclusions, and she regularly keeps essays from becoming too personal to ensure the subject at hand isn’t overshadowed. But it’s when she lets the reins out—when she momentarily puts her journalist and literary-critic selves to the side—that her talent becomes more obvious ... Despite these gems of forward motion, Make It Scream, Make It Burn doesn’t have the same energy of The Empathy Exams. In large part, it’s simply because the book is so neatly organized ... The book is perhaps more coherent because of it, but it also creates spots where the pace slows to a crawl—especially in the middle section, where a series of three art and literary criticism essays bogs the book down, despite each essay working individually ... Still, Make It Scream is easily one of the best essay collections of the year, if not of the past decade. Jamison is a superstar of personal essay for a reason—not only is she a great prose stylist and meticulous researcher, she’s also infinitely curious. It’s this curiosity that makes everything she writes so infectious and makes this collection what it is: a wise and open assortment of essays that, throughout, feels like a gift.
Ross Gay
PositiveThe Seattle Times\"One of the biggest delights in reading The Book of Delights is simply imagining people passing by, seeing Gay — notably tall, often wearing bright, floral-patterned clothing and elaborate scarves — soaking in the small beauties of the world ... The generosity Gay greets the world with doesn’t come off as blindly optimistic or naive. It feels hard-earned. As often as he’s finding delight in gardens, pop music and interactions with strangers, he’s reflecting on the loss of loved ones, institutional racism and toxic masculinity ... Since The Book of Delights is essentially a diary with a singular focus, the book is naturally a little loose — sometimes very loose. But it’s also a reminder of what the personal essay is best at: finding the profound in the mundane. The casual route Gay takes into profundity may not work for everyone, but his delight is infectious. It’s hard to read Gay and not to be won over.\
Hanif Abdurraqib
PositiveThe Seattle TimesConsidering the book is a slight 200 pages, it’s a feat that Abdurraqib fits inasmuch as he does ... While knowing the music of A Tribe Called Quest certainly aids in enjoyment—as does having at least a peripheral knowledge of hip-hop—it isn’t required. Go Ahead in the Rain might appeal most to the music-obsessed, but its audience is wider than its title suggests. At its heart, the book looks at the constant conversation between life and art: how music changes the way we understand and interact with the world, and alters the culture at large.
Nicole Krauss
RaveThe Portland MercuryKrauss’ preoccupations are obvious and on full display: the near-impossibility of long-term romantic love, the historical and political weight of Jewish identity, the way objects carry a sense of their past owners, and the existence of knowledge beyond human comprehension. The last of these is where Forest Dark lingers. The book isn’t exactly magical, but its protagonists are considering how to make sense of the world and make room for mystery … While Forest Dark by no means completely embraces chaos, it welcomes it more than most mainstream novels. But through the book’s layers of narrative technique—multiple juxtaposed plot lines, point-of-view shifts, books within books, real literary history mixed with imagined literary history (all approaches familiar to Krauss’ fans)—she never comes off as experimental. She remains accessible through all of the risks she takes, which might be her greatest feat.
Catherine Lacey
PositiveThe Los Angeles Review of BooksWhile it rarely has the stunning, labyrinthine sentences of Nobody Is Ever Missing, it directs that energy into an unpredictable, layered plot that will likely take most readers by surprise ... While the forward propulsion of the novel is undeniable, Lacey operates as an essayist as often as she operates as a novelist, seeking to raise questions that can never be answered. And this, of course, is the joke of the book’s title: the answers are not answers at all ... There’s no doubt that this toe dip into genre fiction will be as divisive as Nobody Is Ever Missing’s lyrically driven internal world, but it’s also clear that Lacey didn’t take the toe dip lightly; it’s well thought out and she’s careful not to let it overwhelm the book ... no matter how you categorize them, it seems inevitable that her books will find a larger audience. Her sentences are like reading an iconic prose style before it’s become iconic. Her work’s divisiveness, if anything, will only build her cult appeal.
Elena Passarello
PositiveThe Portland MercuryPacked with an assortment of facts, myths, and unexpected connections, each of the book’s essays is a deeply researched ride that presents an almost staggering amount of information. But the essays are also highly playful, never taking themselves too seriously ... Throughout, Passarello works as a sort of critical ringmaster, announcing both the sideshow act and our short-sighted desire for it. She entertains as she exhibits our missteps, and points to the ways we project onto—and define ourselves in relation to—animals.
Sarah Manguso
PositiveThe Portland MercuryThough the accumulation of these entries has a certain difficult-to-deny power, the book will almost certainly be divisive. I wanted to gift it to everyone I know, read it aloud to strangers on the bus, and transcribe it by hand in its entirety like a holy text, but other readers might wonder what the point is. The book doesn’t necessarily tell a clear story, and some of its layers will only be apparent to those who have read Manguso’s previous work.
Diane Williams
PositiveThe Portland Mercury[Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine] is made up of 44 very brief stories, which are so unlike most short stories (and even most flash fiction and prose poetry) that trying to pin a genre on them is near impossible. They have a baffling accessibility once you get going, but even the work of Williams' closest writing relatives—Donald Barthelme and Lydia Davis—can't quite prepare you for their strangeness.
