A Year of Favorites: Tobias Carroll

I always get something wrong in these. There’s generally one book that I utterly forget to include, remember two days later, and curse myself for leaving out. And this year, I’m throwing in some thoughts on music, so that should offer even more opportunities for retrospective regret. I’m getting in just under the wire with this one, yes indeed.

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The Secret History of UFOs Over ’90s Chicago: A Conversation With Margaret Wappler

Neon Green, the debut novel by Margaret Wappler, opens with a portrait of the Allens, a happy family living in the suburbs of Chicago in the mid-90s. From there, she proceeds to test that family in nearly every possible way. Questions of idealism, of legacies, of stifled lives and fidelity all come to the foreground in this novel. Also, there are UFOs–in this slightly altered version of the recent past, flying saucers are a part of everyday life, and one […]

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