Reviews

Cover of The End of San Francisco, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

My Year of Books: 2013

January 1, 2014

(partial list) The End of San Francisco, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (July 21) Humanimal: A Project for Future Children, Bhanu Kapil (Jul 20) Basmati Brown: paths, passages, cross and open, Phinder Dulai (May 23) Tango: My Childhood, Backwards and in High Heels, Justin Vivian Bond (May 22) Ink on Paper, Brad Cran (May 16) Hello Cruel…

‘The Suiciders’ by Travis Jeppesen

November 29, 2013

The Suiciders tells the story of seven young men “permanently in their late teens.” Zach, Lukas, Adam, Matthew, Peter, Arnold, and Taylor are outsiders squatting together in abandoned house in an unnamed American suburb. They decide to take a “road trip to the end of the world,” a conceit from which the title is drawn and on which the plot is constructed.

Not recommended: Burgoo

January 17, 2013

The idea of Burgoo is appealing to me because, generally speaking, stew is a highly desirable comfort food that in normal circumstances would make me feel better. I’d forgotten, though, that Burgoo’s stews seem decidedly unspectacular and disappointing, at least in relation to my stew expectations.

‘Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders’ by Samuel R. Delany

June 26, 2012

One of the perks of fiction reviewing is that it often forcibly exposes me to books that might not organically enter my sphere of attention. Like many, I suspect, I not-so-intentionally choose culture that reinforces rather than challenges my pre-conceived ideas about the world in which I live, I do wish to stretch beyond the safe, boring familiarity of my comfort zone. Samuel R. Delany’s new novel Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders (Magnus Books) is certainly a book capable of assisting with that goal.

‘What You See in the Dark’ by Manuel Muñoz

April 20, 2012

Set primarily in the late 1950s in the California town of Bakersfield, the novel juxtaposes the circumstances of a small town romance that goes horribly wrong beside a fictional account of the making of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (part of which was filmed in Bakersfield).