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★★★☆☆ Split into a prism of countless fractured narratives, Marcial Gala’s The Black Cathedral pieces together the story of the religious Stuart family, who moves into the neighborhood of Cienfuegos, Cuba to begin construction...
★★★★☆ There’s a terrific 1939 painting by Edward Hopper called “New York Movie.” It’s divided, though not quite halved, into two fields: on the left of the canvas, the shadowy elegance of a mid-century...
★★★★★ Fourteen year-old Georgina Vitay feels her life is over: her father, a decorated General in Budapest, has decided to send her to boarding school. To Gina, the Bishop Matula Academy (a traditional, religious...
★★★★☆ “Unless you’re a freak,” Ander Monson writes in his freakishly good short story “Our Song,” “you don’t remember books word for word. You remember what they were to you, what you brought to...
★★★★☆ An unnecessary but quietly pleasant return to the world of her Pulitzer Prize-winning Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout’s Olive, Again is another collection of related short stories loosely centered around old Mrs. Kitteridge, the...
★★☆☆☆ An unnecessary return to the world of his excellent 2017 novel Borne, Jeff VanderMeer’s Dead Astronauts is a prismatic, abstract attempt to both expand and disintegrate the lore of his previous work. “You wouldn’t...
★★★★★ Compiled and edited by Jhumpa Lahiri, The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories is an astonishing and academic collection of forty works by significant Italian writers. These authors will be new to most...
★★★★☆ At first glance, Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom’s Palimpsest feels incongruous with its form. A graphic memoir that investigates Sjöblom’s own adoption in Sweden and her biological parents back in South Korea, Palimpsest is an...
★★★★☆ With Little Weirds, actress and comedian Jenny Slate has created an inspiring manifesto for wayward young adulthood. A beautifully written, introspective search for meaning and self-actualization, Little Weirds is presented as a collection...
