In Disappearing Earth, Structure Suffers for Atmosphere
Disappearing Earth is a debut novel that’s less of a thriller and more of a conceptual attempt at atmosphere.
Book Reviews
Reading During the Plague Year
A quick summary of what I read this year while coronavirus blanketed the Earth.
Place and Identity in How Much of These Hills Is Gold
Where do I come from is a deceiving question. It seems like there should be a straight-forward answer. For the siblings in C Pam Zhang‘s How Much of These Hills Is Gold, a question like… Read More »Place and Identity in How Much of These Hills Is Gold
In Joe Ambercrombie’s Best Served Cold, Revenge is a Tired Trope
Why do some revenge stories work and others, like Best Served Cold, fall flat?
Quitting Haruki Murakami
The originality that captured my attention in his early work is now just recycled, a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy.
Tilling the Prose of Sarah Smarsh’s Heartland
Smarsh demands the reader to defy stereotypes, to see the complexity of a person, instead of the image of a single mom with a baby on her hip, standing in the screen door of a trailer with a cigarette dangling off her lip.
Educated: Abuse, Trauma and Escape
In Educated, Tara Westover escapes the abuse and trauma of a family who has a deep distrust of public education, medical science, and the government.
Vulnerability and Interior Lives in The Goblin Emperor
The Goblin Emperor inverts some classic fantasy tropes.