Elvia Wilk

Positive Brooklyn Rail Elvia Wilk’s debut novel Oval is a speculative meditation on the evil humans do—to the planet and to each other. It’s also a distinctly millennial love story and a sometimes sharp and sometimes meandering critique of modern society ... There is heavy critique throughout the novel of the Neo-Liberal project of charity, of NGOs, and of the life of the (mostly) white, hip, cultural class ... Wilk’s corporate speak throughout the novel is terrifyingly accurate ... There are critiques that could be made about Anja’s inherent position of white privilege, her failure to critique her own lack of any meaningful activism, and her ability to escape the destruction meted out on the less fortunate. But these are all simplistic and avoid the broader global critique Wilk is making—efforts at \'sustainability\' and charity under the guise of corporate power likely will lead only to the ruin that comes at the end of the novel. There is no great redemption here and Anja’s last thoughts at the close of the novel speak to a failure at the very heart of modern society. It is a shatteringly good end to a largely good debut.

Kali Fajardo-Anstine

Rave The Brooklyn Rail ...powerful...brilliant...stories that need to be heard ... In Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s debut story collection Sabrina & Corina we find a different narrative of the West. These are women who inhabit a space between the Indigenous and the Latinx, they are fierce, powerful in their own way, and many have suffered unspeakable trauma ... But not all of the women in these stories come to terrible ends. Some are survivors ... there is a deeper resonance here—a connection with family, with memory, and with story that speaks of a survival that moves beyond any attempt at erasure. These are voices that must be heard, stories that must be read.

Ivelisse Rodriguez

Rave The Brooklyn Rail Rodriguez’s women (and one boy) are complex, well-wrought ... These nine stories present a complex, multifaceted, and somewhat connected narrative of Puerto Rican life ... Rodriguez writes about obsession, depression, and the harm we do to ourselves better than most. She also writes about the balancing acts many of us have to perform between cultures ... \'Love War Stories\' is the final piece in the collection and beautifully sums up so many themes: love as battlefield, as belief, as impossible expectation ... Throughout this collection Rodriguez writes brilliantly of love, life, and loss.

Sophie Mackintosh

Rave The Brooklyn Rail \"Every once in a while a book comes along that is so powerful, so replete with well-sculpted prose and telling such an urgent narrative that I find it impossible to put down. Sophie Mackintosh’s debut novel is just such a book. I want everyone to read it, especially every woman, every writer ... Mackintosh is never heavy-handed in her fable, instead the story unfolds slowly through the voices of the three sisters together ... A masterful writer, Mackintosh draws the reader in incredibly skillfully. Generally when I’m reading, I line edit in my head as I go but Mackintosh’s prose is so clear, so perfect that for once, I could just relax and read ... These women are fascinating and the patterns of their language and ways of living in the world are so compelling...\

Armonia Somers, Trans. by Kit Maude

Positive The Brooklyn Rail This slim novel packs a major wallop ... Highly surreal and somewhat reminiscent of Djuna Barnes or Clarice Lispector...an important work of twentieth century feminism whose central meaning clearly resonates today.

May-Lee Chai

Rave The Brooklyn Rail The eight stories in this collection feature varied characters in different states of diaspora each with their own powerful voice ... With a vision that is both sharp and compassionate, Chai allows us to see just what it is to be \'different\' in a world that embraces conformity ... Chai is masterful here at interweaving American suburban life and Chinese-American specificities ... a significant piece of art reminiscent of Madison Smartt Bell\'s brilliant novella The Year of Silence ... Chai is a masterful writer and this collection presents a deeply moving portrait of the varieties of Chinese diasporic experience.

Shelley Jackson

Rave The Brooklyn Rail Every once in a while a book comes along that merits special attention...is one of those books. It’s masterfully written, wildly entertaining, incredibly clever, and a creepily thrilling good read ... will leave you haunted and questioning the very nature of human existence ... a weighty and wildly creative tome of a novel that will leave you questioning the very nature of writing and reading, of life and death itself.

Kim Sagwa, trans. by Bruce Fulton & Ju-Chan Fulton

Mixed The Brooklyn Rail \"Kim Sagwa\'s English-language debut is both a difficult and complex read ... Throughout the novel Sagwa veers off on detailed critiques of South Korean society and while this might seem confusing or at least a distraction from the forward motion of the text, these mini-rants are essential in understanding the horrific violence that arises later in the novel ... While the narrative shifts tone in several places to give the reader a sharp critique of South Korean society, these shifts actually serve as counterpoint to the teen melodrama of Crystal\'s narrative. And while Sagwa’s use of long stretches of dialogue can be somewhat excessive, ultimately her strong characterization of these two troubled young women makes for a compelling and deeply disturbing read.\

Lydia Kiesling

Positive The Brooklyn Rail Lydia Kiesling’s fiction debut is a road trip novel with a twist bringing with it all the basics of road fiction ... Instead of the usual soul-seeking inner dialogues or buddy conversations one finds in road novels, Kiesling portrays the frazzled and fractured thought processes of a stressed out single mother with her first child using run-on sentences, repetition of words, and omission of punctuation—all of which works to bring the reader in to Daphne’s state of mind ... This novel is an equally frustrating and beautiful read.

Tommy Orange

Rave The Brooklyn Rail When Margaret Atwood, Marlon James, and Louise Erdrich rave about a book before its release, it had better live up to the hype and Tommy Orange’s debut, There There very much does ... The voices of his characters are well wrought but what is most striking is the clean integration of twenty-first century technology and urban culture into the novel ... this is part of what makes Orange a superior writer: he’s not just writing stories that need to be told, he’s creating narrative with a razor sharp attention to craft ... Unlike so many of his male contemporaries, Orange does an excellent job with his female characters: they have depth, complexity, and are central, integral actors in the larger drama of the novel ... This is a truly harrowing, powerful read and a wonderfully sculpted novel.

Meg Wolitzer

Mixed The Brooklyn Rail Much has already been written about Meg Wolitzer’s lengthy new novel The Female Persuasion, calling it everything from the \'Great American Novel\' to retro elitist white middle-class feminism. I would argue that this novel is neither of those but exhibits both elements of genius and significant limitations for a twenty-first century feminist novel ... While there are issues about the use of various tropes and criticisms surrounding so-called \'second wave\' feminism throughout the novel, there are larger issues of structure that can frustrate the reader. The novel starts out with two main characters (Greer and Faith), but midway through we are given long sections dedicated to the other people in Greer’s life. While these sections do serve to give added depth to these other characters, they leave Greer and the main narrative of the novel mostly on hold while we work through some one hundred pages of minor narratives ... Wolitzer’s attempts to be inclusive are often clunky (as an example, she tries to slip the word “trans” into the novel in a brief inessential passage). What The Female Persuasion is not is a viable manifesto for modern feminism, but what it is is a mostly well-wrought narrative of two white women ... It’s a story about a young woman, an older woman, and two of the young woman’s friends; it’s not a guide for twenty-first century feminism, and it’s both limiting and unfair to treat it as more than what it is—a good novel.