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Internet Terror: ‘Four New Messages’ by Joshua Cohen
In his new collection of stories, Four New Messages (Graywolf, 208 pages), Joshua Cohen portrays lives that are predicated on and destroyed by the Internet’s world of screens and static. Portaging an...
View Article‘Mendocino Fire’: 2015 Best American Short Stories Notable, Issue No. 100
One time in the library in town, a boy has a rat inside his T-Shirt. Its head pokes out under the boy’s chin, its claw-y hands clinging and whiskers quicked forward. It is as if Finn has never wanted...
View Article‘Hold On’: 2015 Best American Short Stories Notable, Issue No. 100
The first thing I remember is the woman’s voice, amplified through the megaphone, calling my name. Castillo, Robert. I opened my eyes, but knew they were open only because I could feel my lids moving....
View Article‘Bank Repos for Sale,’ 2015 Best American Short Stories & Best American...
Springer got applications from lots of meatheads in town for the job. Large corn-fed guys who could have knocked Springer out just giving him a good smack upside the head, the kind who stood outside...
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L.A. Story: ‘Cake Time’ by Siel Ju
In 1985, Lorrie Moore announced her arrival on the literary scene with “How to be the Other Woman,” the provocative opening salvo that began her first story collection, Self-Help; she has since gone on...
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Between the Grotesque and the Real: ‘Her Body and Other Parties’ by Carmen...
Her Body and Other Parties (Graywolf; 241 pages) by Carmen Maria Machado, which was recently shortlisted for the National Book Award, lives up to the critical acclaim it has accrued. This collection of...
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Born Under a Bad Sign: ‘Black Sheep Boy’ by Martin Pousson
Author and poet Martin Pousson’s Black Sheep Boy (182 pages; Rare Bird Books ), winner of the 2017 PEN Center USA Award for Fiction, and re-issued in paperback last month, is an unforgettable novel...
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This Shifting Web: ‘Stream System and ‘Border Districts’ by Gerald Murnane
“The writers of the present century have lost respect for the invisible,” says one of the narrators of Stream System: The Collected Short Fiction of Gerald Murnane (560 pages; FSG). “They have tried to...
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Breaking the Cycle: ‘Fight No More: Stories’ by Lydia Millet
In “Libertines,” the opening story of Lydia Millet’s Fight No More: Stories (211 pages; W. W. Norton), the reader is introduced to a paranoid real estate agent, who becomes convinced that a prospective...
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Burn It All Down: ‘Days of Awe’ by A.M. Homes
A.M. Homes first made her mark on the literary scene with 1990’s The Safety of Objects, a dark and dynamic collection that established her as one of our foremost chroniclers of suburban dysfunction....
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‘Floyd Harbor’ by Joel Mowdy: Harbor Lights, Suburban Sights, and Mean Streets
The inhabitants of Joel Mowdy’s Long Island spend their days and nights far from the affluent Hamptons, let alone Fitzgerald’s East Egg. Floyd Harbor (256 pages; Catapult Press), Mowdy’s debut...
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‘Diary of a Murderer’ by Young-ha Kim: Offbeat and Darkly Rewarding
With a title like Diary of a Murderer (200 pages; Mariner; translated by Krys Lee), the latest English release of Young-ha Kim’s work might attract some strange looks while you’re holding it on the...
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‘Suicide Woods’ by Benjamin Percy: A Horror that’s Close to Home
Benjamin Percy is a writer who understands that, in the twenty-first century, the scariest thing to many readers is not the supernatural or threats from beyond the grave, but something altogether...
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