MixedThe New York Journal of BooksProfessor Davis is capable of beautiful sentences and turns of a phrase ... Yet while Professor Davis is undeniably a highly skilled author, Duplex reads sluggishly. Although only 250 pages, the book feels bloated. Chapters meander through dreamy sequences and scenes end abruptly without advancing the story. Professor Davis could have removed 50 pages from this book without damaging it ... Alternatively, Professor Davis could have put a little more action into Duplex. Virtuosity is a wonderful gift, but it is a means to an end, not an end unto itself ... With Duplex, Professor Davis sets out to do something very bold: apply the small town realism of Thornton Wilder or Sherwood Anderson to a setting filled with sci-props. Her remarkably non-remarkable treatment of a rusting suburb on the edge of The Twilight Zone is at once interesting and off-putting.
Dorthe Nors, trans. by Martin Aitken
PositiveNew York Journal of Books...precisely crafted and melancholy ... Melancholy is the theme across this collection, and it is melancholy of the deepest kind ... While Nors’s fondness for sadness might turn away some readers, there is no denying her sophistication and precision as a writer ... While the author’s balance of dark and light may render her work inaccessible to some readers, Karate Chop displays an admirable willingness to take on difficult stories, and Dorthe Nors tells these difficult stories very well.
