Melissa Corliss DeLorenzo reviews Ellen Meeropol’s debut novel, House Arrest. In the review, Corliss DeLorenzo writes: “Meeropol takes the reader deeply into the complexities of friendship and the blurred lines of right and wrong as the characters confront painful pasts and reach conclusions that allow them to move beyond the limitations of those histories.” Read more of this review.
LouAnn Muhm reviews Deborah Digges’ final poetry collection, The Wind Blows Through the Doors of My Heart. Muhm writes in her review: “Writing a review of a posthumous collection from a well-loved poet is a daunting task. What is there to say that is not elegiac praise? How to know which poems are as the poet conceived them, and which are constructed from unfinished notes and drafts? There is an unevenness in this collection. Is it due to the untimely death of the poet before the collection was finished? Could it be showing the poet’ s descent toward her apparent suicide? There is no way to know.” Read more from this review.
Val B Russell reviews Katie Farris’ boysgirls, her debut collection of stories. Russell writes in the review, “As the title suggests, the book is split into gender specific sections. “Girls” is Farris’ intelligent and pointed treatment of what it means to be a girl based on her own modern mythical creatures. “Mise en Abyme,” depicts a girl with a mirror for a face. (…) In the second half, “Boys,” we encounter the male characters. “The Boy With One Wing” is clearly a reference to the emotional neutering of boys by a patriarchal society. (…) Read more from this review.
Mayra David reviews Siohban Fallon’s debut novel, You Know When the Men Are Gone: “Among the plethora of truly touching impressions one takes away from these short stories, the title story actually conveys the essence of the strongest one: the sheer emptiness of Fort Hood when the men are deployed. Imagine: a town loses 20,000 of its people, mostly men, in one day—husbands and fathers assigned to distance and danger somewhere overseas. (…)” Read more from this review.
Val B Russell reviews Kathleen Winter’s Annabel: “We live in a world that is, at its very biological core, based on gender and the differences inherent within. From conception to birth our female or maleness is the central focus of how we will be defined by our parents, peers and ultimately society as a whole. Boxes are ticked on birth certificates and other government forms, names are chosen in accordance with male or female determinations and we are assigned gender specific roles based on our genitalia and outward appearance. But what if we were born with both genders equally evident physically? What if the atmosphere into which we arrived was fearful and unforgiving of the difference? In her novel Annabel (Grove Press, 2011), Kathleen Winter courageously tackles much more than the complexity of the hermaphrodite, she challenges our notion of what gender truly means at the fundamental level of our humanity and she does it with the deft care and sensibility of an artisan. (…)” Read more from this review.
Val B. Russell reviews a new translation of Anna Swir’s poetry collection, Building the Barricade and other Poems (Calypso Editions, 2011). In the review, Russell writes: “Amid the blood and guts rebellion of every war against oppression that there has ever been, you will always find the courage and devotion of the poet. In as much as an historian records the factual account of the circumstances of the ravages of war, the poet internalizes the individual experience of armed conflict, thus preserving the humanity lost in the debris of brutality. It was in such an atmosphere of upheaval and suffering that Polish poet Anna Swir collected her own images.” Read more about this courageous poet and her collection.
Mayra David reviews Clara and Mr. Tiffany: A Novel by Susan Vreeland, and writes, “What is it about this time in New York that so fascinates people? This is a question I often ask myself—usually when I head to my shelf to grab something by Edith Wharton that I’ve read several times before. Reading this book, Clara and Mr. Tiffany, I feel I have an answer….”
Kylie Grant reviews Fatima Bhutto’s Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter’s Memoir (Nation Books, 2010). Grant gives a balanced review of the strengths in Bhutto’s memoir, as well as how she falls short of giving the reader a true exploration into both politics and family.
Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism Virago Press Ltd, 2010 Review by Kylie Grant Natasha Walter’s Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism (Virago Press Ltd, 2010) was one of the most exciting non-fiction books to be published in 2010. It was also a much needed one, being an important exploration of feminism at a time [...]
Review by Jan Seibold All Things That Matter Press, 2010 Some authors use the word “odyssey” to simply represent a journey or a passage of time. In Lily’s Odyssey author Carol Smallwood takes a more literal approach. Just as Odysseus spends years making his way home after the Trojan War, Lily struggles to find her [...]
Natsuo Kirino’s novels are not for the faint-hearted, nor are they for westerners loath to abandon the cultural stereotype of the Japanese woman as a delicate and beautiful “oriental flower”. Wendy Nakanishi explores the role of women in Japanese culture and society through Kirino’s popular works of crime and suspense.
