PositiveNashville SceneStray makes efforts to disrupt and interrogate a narrative structure — perhaps one particularly prevalent in memoirs dealing with the course of addiction — that ends with any kind of clear solution or release ... Stray may eschew a linear shape in its storytelling, but it certainly is never shapeless. It’s broken into three sections: one focused primarily on Danler’s mother, one on her father and one on the married man with whom she is carrying on an affair ... Despite the memoir’s many markers of place, however, I sometimes was briefly disoriented as to where I was in its kaleidoscopic and occasionally blurry timeline. Still, part of Danler’s project here seems to be blurring boundaries ... Stray’s moments of greatest power are achieved in the instances where Danler unflinchingly describes and details those in-between borderless spaces.
Sayaka Murata, Trans. by Ginny Tapley Takemori
RaveThe New York Journal of Books\"It is often delightfully unsettling to watch Keiko strive to be a normal person when she is outside the confines of the store itself. With its understated prose and frequently deadpan narration, many moments of Convenience Store Woman are simultaneously sweet and darkly funny ... The repetitive cycles in Keiko’s convenience store routine are infused with a joyful exaltation that gives this slim novel a startling heft. The most mundane moments in Convenience Store Woman are possessed by a weird, marvelous momentum. Instead of wondering how Keiko will change over the course of the narrative, readers may end up hoping that, like her daily routine at the convenience store, Keiko, too, will stay the same.\
Hari Kunzru
RaveThe Nashville SceneIn its interest in the lines between past and present, White Tears plays with its own sort of polyphonic sound; repetitions of violence and doubled hauntings create an eerie harmony. As the novel picks up speed, even the present tense and the past tense begin to blend into an uncomfortable melody that only adds to the novel’s terror ... The reverb Kunzru creates by colliding voices from different eras is no trick — and it makes White Tears a novel filled with echo and disaster that feels alarmingly, crucially present.
