PositiveThe Hudson Review\"... rather subtle, almost subdued ... Leave Society often feels like a catalog of bodily developments, a dossier of setbacks, cures, and false diagnoses ... The resulting style possesses a hypnotic banality, or a form of \'dream accuracy,\' as Li calls it at one point. Lin’s language is spare but carefully selected, bristling with radiant strangeness. Some of the effect comes from a different sort of selection ... Suddenly—and with great delight—we realize that Leave Society is as much a novel about Li’s re-socialization as it is about his period of self-imposed isolation.
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Pola Oloixarac, tr. Adam Morris
PositiveThe Hudson ReviewMona explodes off the page with a bravado that is self-aware yet unimpeded ... The opening chapters of Mona are a master class in developing and amplifying suspense; they also contain a vivid and intimate portrayal of a hyperactive, troubled, and alluring mind. Mona is outrageous, observant, and hilarious ... Mona is...the sort of writer who is able to keep us at arm’s length while still divulging some of the innermost parts of herself ... If the ensuing chapters of Mona disappoint then, it is no fault of the title character herself. Too much time is devoted to the close-minded fellow writers insistent on typecasting her[.]
Rainald Goetz, tr. Nathan Adrian West
RaveIDIn 1991, after spending a year in London, Goetz returned to Munich and began hitting up clubs like Babalu and Ultraschall several nights a week; soon he began fantasising about creating a novelistic form that would not only encapsulate but also imitate the immediacy of the dancefloor, the flickering of a strobe light, the ‘cross-fades’ and ‘cuts’ made by DJs, and the fleeting but often hilarious conversations one has with passing acquaintances ... With Rave, Goetz realised this goal, splicing fragments together to create an endless stream of micro-events: we learn that \'the brown tablets apparently have heroin mixed in with them\'; we watch \'Desiree [root] around…the plush teddy bear Jana [is] sporting as a backpack\'; we follow a lone cigarette as it exchanges hands, gets stuck behind an ear, falls to the ground, and gets picked up a few minutes later by another person ... Goetz is so busy making his writing sound like techno that he forgets to write about how techno sounds ... This somewhat ahistorical bent makes Rave a confounding read in our own time ... Even though Rave might be an ideal read for those of us searching out the next underground party, it’s a strange fit for our period of political uprising and historical awareness. But maybe, just maybe, it will inspire someone to write a novel worthy of the present, a novel that can more fully investigate the way sounds can cross oceans, intersect, and create something new.
