There is a small space where literary fiction, narratives dealing with finding both self and purpose, and love stories converge. The difficult thing is finding a novel that inhabits that space and actually offers a satisfying reading experience instead of a sappy, monotonous, meandering mess. David Trueba’s Blitz inhabits this space but also deconstructs the role of architecture and explores both Spain’s crippled economy from within a microcosm as well as a heterosexual relationship in which the female is much […]
“A Dark Dream Pregnant With Horror”: A Review of “Albina and the Dog-Men”
Alejandro Jodorowsky is as good with words as he is with images. His psychomagical storytelling always translates into a surreal experience where folklore and mysticism crash into each other to create a new thing. In Albina and the Dog-Men, released earlier this year by Restless Books, the author/director/screenwriter/poet/musician/actor/etcetera creates a violent, hypersexual mythology to explore magic, beauty, desire, and the nature of relationships. The result is a maelstrom of fantastic visions, a celebration of language in its most bizarre forms, […]
Questioning Humanity Amidst Shifting Memories: A Review of Brian Evenson’s “The Warren”
I’m not entirely sure what a “writer’s writer” is, but every time I hear that term, Brian Evenson comes to mind. He seems to purposefully tackle every genre, usually a few of them at once, in order to prove that true talent is a malleable thing that can adapt to a multiplicity of forms. Regardless of what he does, it shines and puts to shame most authors only working in that genre. In The Warren, Evenson’s newest novella, the author […]
Stephen Graham Jones Revives the Werewolf Novel: A Review of “Mongrels”
To say a novel is one of the best in its genre and the absolute best in its subgenre is high praise. However, to say that a novel adds so much to the canon of its genre and subgenre that it becomes that statistical impossibility known as an instant classic is something a reviewer, at least an honest, lucky one, probably gets to write only a handful of times in his or her career. In the case of Stephen Graham […]
“Biography With One Foot in the Fantastic”: A Review of “The Incantations of Daniel Johnston”
The fist time I read The Incantations of Daniel Johnston I was stuck at San Diego International Airport on my way to LA. Airports are great places to read because they give you time, but they’re also awful places to read because you’re briefly uprooted and thus vulnerable; you’re in a non-space where people come and go at an accelerated speed and where you momentarily embody a floating signifier. The Incantations of Daniel Johnston struck me as a perfect read […]
On a Wave of Mutilation: A Review of Brian Evenson’s “Last Days”
Brian Evenson’s Last Days is simultaneously one of the greatest send-ups of the hardboiled detective novel and of the best celebrations of the brutal, violent, and mysterious nature of the genre. Furthermore, it’s a narrative that demonstrates how hilarity and snarky dialogue can be used effectively even when a story is pushing at the edges of its genre’s darkest, most emotionally gritty and grotesque boundaries. Ripe with brutality and the kind or religious undertones that can often be found in […]
Obsession, Mysteries, and Gothic Elegance: A Review of Scott Adlerberg’s “Graveyard Love”
There are a few crime authors walking the dividing line between literary fiction and noir, but Scott Adlerberg’s Graveyard Love is the kind of text that could easily become canonical when it comes to defining what that line looks like. At once elegant, dark, and mysterious, this relatively short novel offers readers a love story wrapped in a bizarre secret and sprinkled with sexual tension and unexpected violence. The result is a narrative that’s as hard to define as it […]
A Year of Favorites: Gabino Iglesias
Best Book Stuff of 2015: Best books of the year: 10. The Up-Down by Barry Gifford 9. Jigsaw Youth by Tiffany Scandal 8. Get It While You Can by Nick Jaina 7. Witchita Stories by Troy James Weaver