RaveThe Washington Independent Review of Books... a masterpiece of place-based nonfiction with soothing, rhythmic sentences that mask the intrusive outside world like a white noise machine ... Nors has a gift for figurative language, for linking people and nature ... the sort of essay collection that rewards pause. It’s possible to read in one swoop, as I did initially, drawn in by the cadence of her sentences and reading forward to discover how else this narrator would surprise me ... there’s a rhythmic, calming quality to this book. I plan to re-read it, one day, on a cold, desolate beach.
Lisa Russ Spaar
RaveThe Adroit Journal... a novel made of glass, possessing characteristics of both prose and poetry. It exists in that shifting, enviable in-between. This is a debut novel—\'debut\' is and isn’t accurate—written by an author in possession of a singular ear for the ways one can stretch and shape the English language and decades of experience as a poet, critic, and teacher ... Although I admit to being predisposed to admiration, I write with a renewed sense of awe—for this author’s mind, music, and embodied, compassionate characterization. The novel is also intricately plotted, but I hesitate to summarize it and spoil the pleasure of its mystical unspooling ... Spaar offers a stark, sorrowful look at illness ... My fear for this character was so intense I had to pause and remind myself: This is fiction. She is not real and in no real danger. Yet Spaar’s novel is so gripping—especially in the scenes concerning this character—I read forward with a visceral, maternal worry, wondering how Marlise would make it out of her illness, or whether, like glass dropped on concrete, she’d shatter.
Jazmina Barrera, trans. by Christina MacSweeney
RaveThe Los Angeles Review of Books... isn’t constrained by the anticipated rise and fall of its plot ... Yet the path forward into first-time parenting is familiar, almost fated. I read breathlessly, feeling the magnetic pull of an author who allows deep thinking and a hunger for connection — with art, with the earth, with our mothers and our mother’s mothers — to guide the way ... Like parenthood, a translated text is often a co-creation. Through Christina MacSweeney’s translation, Barrera’s prose is clear-eyed and poetic ... Despite the minimalist form that the brain fog of pregnancy might necessitate, Barrera’s effect is expansive, foregrounding her identity as a person of color among predominantly white and middle-class narratives ... [a] generous, openhearted project inviting readers to discover what is often hidden away, unseen ... Barrera writes with a deep reverence for the matrilineal, for the body and mind that bore her ... Barrera veers toward optimism in the face of crushing darkness — a stance that I find refreshing and admirable.
