book reviews

Review: The Collected Schizophrenias

12/1/2020

Remarks and Reflections on Schizoaffective disorder
Review: The Collected Schizophrenias

Brianna McCray

Esme Weijun Wang
Collection of Essays
Graywolf Press, pp. 202
Cost: $16.00

After seeking help from numerous doctors and specialists, Esme Weijun Wang couldn’t shake the feeling that something was being missed.

Finally, there was a breakthrough during her college years when she was first diagnosed as bipolar the summer before she left for New Haven. And then when her medical records were sent to Stanford she explains, “In the referral authorization itself, I was listed as having two diagnoses: schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type and idiopathic peripheral neuropathy. There was no mention of fibromyalgia, complex PTSD, dysautonomia/POTS, chronic Lyme disease, or any of the other diagnoses I’d received over the years” (185).

Esme Weijun Wang’s 2019 essay collection The Collected Schizophrenias is an engaging journey that deals with a serious topic. The book does a thorough job of educating the reader in this area of health that is commonly misunderstood. The relationship between the author and the text is beautifully captured by including both clinical information and her own personal struggles and triumphs.

Review: Little Glass Planet

11/1/2020

Shatter Your World
Review: Little Glass Planet

Dina Folgia

Dobby Gibson
Poetry
Graywolf Press, pp. 80
Cost: $16

Glass.

The word itself evokes fragility, as well as a certain sense of clarity. It’s easy to conjure the image of stained glass windows in a cathedral, or worn sea glass on the edge of a sprawling beach: both images clear, both images concrete. But what is really “clear” this day in age?

Dobby Gibson’s fourth collection of poetry, entitled Little Glass Planet, asks this very question.

Review: The Color of Love

9/1/2020

Choosing Love
Review: The Color of Love

Connor Buckmaster

Marra B. Gad
Memoir
Agate Publishing, pp. 256
$17.00

“There are two things that happen when someone is trying to decide [...] where they are going to put your otherness,” Marra B. Gad writes in her new book The Color of Love. “For some, there is a blankness in the eyes that takes over, as if they are lost in thought,” but for others, “there is an immediate narrowing, a sharpness that engages. And it is because they don’t need to think.” For Marra, these two reactions encompassed much of her world. In the prologue, Marra describes her background as a mixed Jewish woman, half white and half black, who was adopted by a Jewish family in 1970. To Marra, the labels she identifies with don’t matter, shouldn’t matter, yet, “For many, identity is literally a black-and-white matter.” Something that is, or isn’t.

Review: The Intangibles

8/1/2020

An Ode to Writing
Review: The Intangibles

Elizabeth Mosolovich

Elaine Equi
Poetry
Coffee House Press, pp. 96
Cost: $16.95

The word “intangible” means “unable to be touched or grasped; not having physical presence.” Elaine Equi’s newest collection of poetry, The Intangibles, is an ode to writers and writing itself, that thing which cannot be grasped but is full of life and creativity and which all writers try to bend to their will, or else let themselves be consumed. Infusing her respect for past writers and the writerly craft, Equi’s simple, well-crafted prose brings the reader on a historical and literary journey, where the influence of and appreciation for past poets enhance the depth of her work.

Review: The Light Source

7/1/2020

by Erin Theresa Welsh

The Brutally Beautiful Complexity of Friendships
Review: The Light Source

Erin Theresa Welsh

Kim Magowan
Fiction
7.13 Books pp.221
Cost: $12.80 (paperback)

Relationships, no matter what type, are complex. Society sees friendships as one of the strongest relationships that can be established, and romantic relationships are one of the more challenging and delicate things to be a part of. Either way, both seem to be crucially important to human culture, and both tend to have a strong impact on an individual’s life.

Kim Magowan’s novel, The Light Source, is an interestingly realistic and compelling perspective on creating, maintaining, and destroying relationships over a lifetime. Each chapter is a whirlwind of new perspectives and opinions from each character and helps the audience get to know them personally and understand them more. Magowan writes the entire book split into the perspectives of seven of the main characters while the chapters jump through time to give the audience a well-rounded view of the same event surrounding each friend. Though it has a lot of back and forth throughout time and perspectives, it sticks to the main topic of Heather and Julie’s friendship and, eventually, their romantic relationship and how every character’s life ends up panning out. It is like a butterfly effect of one person’s actions or reactions causing a difference in another’s life and eventual outcome.

Review: Sacred Groves: Or, How a Cemetery Saved My Soul

6/1/2020

Finding Sanctity in Suffering
Review: Sacred Groves: Or, How a Cemetery Saved My Soul

Mickey Bratton

Kathleen Davies
Nonfiction: Memoir
Bedazzled Ink Publishing, pp. 262
Cost: $16.95

In her memoir Sacred Groves: Or, How a Cemetery Saved My Soul, Kathleen Davies examines the concept of identity through the lens of a novice female professor. Through her experiences as an outcast and stepping into new territories, Davies finds her purpose in life—ironically in a Victorian graveyard. The cemetery magically holds parallel to her internal battles in ways that are enlightening and serve as a heaven on earth in a world full of uncomfortable encounters. Not only does her muse scream at her, surrounded by mesmerizing architectural beauties in nature, but she has a self-awakening among her observations. Told with poems, witty snippets from her journey, and photographs of headstones and mausoleums taken with her own camera, Davies breathes life into the inanimate statues and lifeless tombs, making the local graveyard her “feminine space,” almost like a garden. By describing such a serene place using textures and voiced appreciations, Davies not only provokes imagination for herself, but also for the reader. She remarkably navigates through the unknown and speaks her truth with such vulnerability, revealing that through suffering, humans often find hidden truths.

Review: Reinventing Jenna Rose

5/1/2020

Taking Control of One’s Life After Abuse
Review: Reinventing Jenna Rose

Taylor Blum

Joni Marie Iraci
Novel
Fat Dog Books, pp.268
Cost: $16.95

Jenna Rose is a prisoner in her own home. Shut off from the world and abused by her parents, she sees an opportunity to escape across the country and takes it.

Reinventing Jenna Rose is a story of overcoming trauma and taking control of one’s life. We meet Jenna, a lost seventeen-year-old, who is abandoned in her California home once again by her mother, Meghan. For fear of her father and his heinous gaze, Jenna escapes to New York City to find a grandmother she didn't know existed. Through her grandmother, Katherine, Jenna learns of generations of female suffering.

Review: i shimmer sometimes, too

4/1/2020

Identifying Your Inner Shimmer
Review: i shimmer sometimes, too

Amanda Spadel

Porsha Olayiwola
Poetry
Button Poetry, pp. 76
Cost: $16.00 (paperback)

In her debut poetry collection, i shimmer sometimes too, Porsha Olayiwola shares powerful odes to the world that has shaped her identity through the use of honest and suspenseful imagery, creative form, and relatable motifs in today’s society.

Review: Not Everyone is Special

2/1/2020

Laughing at Life's Hurdles
Review: Not Everyone is Special

Christopher M. Comparri

Josh Denslow
Short Stories
7.13 Books, pp. 175
Cost: $9.85 (paperback or e-book)

Each of us finds a way to cope with the hurdles and pain that life throws our way. Some turn towards their work, others to more destructive means. Then, there’s Josh Denslow. In his collection of stories Not Everyone is Special, Denslow covers a range of topics with his characters: from being a child of divorce, to being a survivor in the aftermath of a friends’ suicide, to being a little person in today’s world. His approach is to use humor not only to build up the narrative in each story, but show how people use it as a form of self-preservation and self-defense in ways that are true to real life, even when he is putting a character in a world where people have superpowers like being able to get the wrinkles out of shirts by patting them down with their hands or extending and retracting their facial hair in real time.

Review: The Wanting Life

1/1/2020

The Complexities of Human Desire
Review: The Wanting Life

Megan Kiger

Mark Rader
Fiction
Unnamed Press, pp. 315
Cost: $18.00 (paperback)

Imagine the sun setting in a not-so bustling Rome—a glass of Limóncello and fresh risotto in front of you. Your table is small with intricate iron wrought detail, and the world is quiet. There’s a slight summer breeze and a whispering guitar, maybe two, in the background. You can almost hear each wish as it meets the surface of the Trevi Fountain.

Mark Rader transports us, sans jetlag, to a past world of desire and love lost in his unconventional romance novel The Wanting Life. We travel from Cape Code to Italy to a generationally familiar town in Wisconsin, navigating the hearts and minds of Rader’s characters and the threads that pull so heavily on their spirits.