Glassworks
  • home
  • about
    • history
    • masthead
    • staff bios
    • community outreach
    • affiliations
    • contact
  • current issue
    • read Issue 21
    • letter from the editor
    • looking glass fall 2020
    • interview with Porsha Olayiwola
    • new book reviews
    • new opinion editorials
  • submit
    • submission guidelines
  • looking glass
    • fall 2020
    • spring 2020
    • fall 2019
    • spring 2019
    • fall 2018
    • spring 2018
    • fall 2017
    • apprentice 2017
    • spring 2017
    • fall 2016
    • spring 2016
    • fall 2015
    • spring 2015
    • fall 2014
    • spring 2014
    • spring 2012
    • winter 2012
    • fall 2011
  • editorial content
    • book reviews
    • opinion
    • interviews >
      • Ed Briant
      • Eugene Cross
      • Josh Denslow
      • Christopher DeWan
      • Katherine Flannery Dering >
        • Aftermath
      • Eric Dyer
      • Julie Enszer >
        • Avowed
      • Mitchell Fink
      • Olivia Gatwood
      • David Gerrold
      • Cynthia Graham
      • Ernest Hilbert
      • Paul Lisicky >
        • The Roofers
      • Scott McCloud
      • Jan Millsapps
      • Anis Mojgani
      • Pedram Navab
      • Kelly Norris
      • Porsha Olayiwola
      • Michael Pagdon
      • Aimee Parkison >
        • The Petals of Your Eyes
      • Brad Parks
      • Chris Rakunas
      • Carlos Ramos
      • Mary Salvante
      • Jill Smolowe
      • Jayne Thompson
      • Julie Marie Wade
      • Melissa Wiley
  • flash glass
    • flash glass 2021
    • flash glass 2020
    • flash glass 2019
    • flash glass 2018
    • flash glass 2017
    • flash glass 2016
    • flash glass 2015
  • media
    • art
    • photography
    • audio
    • video
    • new media
  • archive
    • read past issues
    • order print issues
  • Master of Arts in Writing program
    • about Writing Arts at Rowan University
    • application and requirements
  • newsletter

Review: The Light Source

7/1/2020

0 Comments

 
​by Erin Theresa Welsh
Picture
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.

Read More
0 Comments

Review: Reinventing Jenna Rose

5/1/2020

1 Comment

 
Picture
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.

Read More
1 Comment

Review: Not Everyone is Special

2/1/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture
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.

Read More
0 Comments

Review: The Wanting Life

1/1/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture
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.

Read More
0 Comments

Review: The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish

12/1/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
A Deep Dive Into Familial Relationships
Review: The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish

Elizabeth Mecca

Katya Apekina
Fiction
Two Dollar Radio, pp. 353
Cost: $16.99 (paperback)



In Katya Apekina’s novel The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish, relationships are used to emphasize characterization and create drama within the story. In particular, the novel examines father-daughter relationships, mother-daughter relationships, husband-wife relationships, and artist-muse relationships. Told through numerous first person accounts in the form of narratives, letters, phone conversations, and interviews, Apekina provides the reader with an in depth, up-close look at the intimate intricacies of these relationships and their meanings. The unique structure of this novel allows the reader to see each character’s internal and external struggles and conflicts. These accounts in various forms help create strong characterization and drama within the story.

Read More
0 Comments

Review: Pretend We Live Here

6/1/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
The Art of the Uncomfortable
Review: Pretend We Live Here

Laura Kincaid


Genevieve Hudson
Fiction
Future Tense Books, pp. 168
Paperback, $13 US
    




​
Genevieve Hudson captures the comfortable in the uncomfortable. Her collection of short stories, Pretend We Live Here, centers on characters looking for home in places, in people, in their own bodies. No matter where her characters roam, readers are confronted with the violence inherent to existence through her sharp-edged but haunting, sometimes even joyful, prose.



Read More
0 Comments

Review: The Missing Girl

5/1/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
A Little Goes A Long Way
Review: The Missing Girl
​
Elizabeth DiPietro

Jacqueline Doyle
Fiction
Black Lawrence Press, pp. 30
Paperback, $8.95 US
The woman running for her life from a man in a park. The girl who passes out at a party after a tainted drink. These are familiar stories we’ve been exposed to time and time again in the media. In fact, they’re so common they border on cliché. We’re under the impression there is nothing left to say, but there’s still, for a lack of words, fresh blood in these stories.

Jacqueline Doyle’s debut chapbook The Missing Girl features a collection of stories about the threats women face. From rape to questionable encounters, Doyle’s genius is that through her flash fiction pieces, she relies on our societal knowledge to fill in the blanks of her finely drawn bits of terror; and through them reminds us that for women nothing and nowhere is safe.

Read More
0 Comments

Review: The Expanse Between

4/1/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
The Fiction of Privacy
Review: The Expanse Between

Joe Magaletta


Lee L. Krecklow
Fiction
Winter Goose Publishing 
Paperback, $13.99
In Lee L. Krecklow’s debut novel The Expanse Between, he delivers a page-turner that will leave most readers unsure of what they would do by the end. It does an interesting job of introducing a commentary on the growing Internet, screen-obsessed culture. It takes place sometime in the mid-2000’s before this craze had really taken off, and in doing so shows that perhaps the human condition always had the impulses that the technology of today is making easier to appease.

Read More
0 Comments

Review: Hoopty Time Machines

11/1/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
A Jump Into Reality
Review: Hoopty Time Machines

Jordan Moslowski

Christopher DeWan
Fiction
Atticus Books, pp 133
Paperback, $14.95 US
​Every child hears “Once upon a time” and immediately knows that “happily ever after” is on its way. Snow White is woken up with Prince Charming’s kiss. Ariel gets her legs and her man. Cinderella is reunited with her precious glass slipper and her true love. But what happens when you wander off into your own once upon a time, only to find that Cinderella’s other shoe has dropped on your head? Suddenly you’re sitting on the commuter train, heading into another Monday of sucking down crappy coffee in that tiny office it took you five years of making copies and running office lunch orders to get promoted to.

Now you’re thinking happily ever after might just be for fairy tales after all.

Read More
0 Comments

Review: Songs for a River

5/1/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
The Beauty of Nature and the Dullness of Man

Review: Songs for a River

Rachel Saltzman

Jerry McGahan
Fiction/Media - Stories
Knut House Press: pp. 241
Cost: $35.00 (full color edition)
           $15.00 (black and white edition)
Songs for a River, McGahan’s third book, combines eloquent descriptions of nature, vivid artistic philosophies, and serene paintings of grazing buffalo in mountainous landscapes with a complicated romance that spans almost the entire novel. There is a Zen-like quality that carries over from page to page, inviting the reader to see art, nature, and relationships as more than just ordinary aspects of one’s life. But between the lovely portraits of wild North-West America, McGahan addresses the similarities between art, humanity, and the spirit of nature; although our pride as humans is to live and govern above the rest of the animal kingdom through reason and emotions, at our base nature we rely on the same instinctual tendencies as our hoofed and feathery counterparts. And even though we might consider ourselves beings of intellectual and artistic ability, it is difficult to push aside the lingering traces of animal ancestry along with the need to break free from societal restraints.


Read More
0 Comments
<<Previous

    book reviews by glassworks editorial staff



    Archives

    December 2020
    November 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    August 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    February 2018
    November 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    February 2017
    November 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    October 2014
    April 2014
    January 2014
    March 2013
    December 2012


    Categories

    All
    Able Muse
    Abuse
    Agha Shahid Ali Prize
    Alfred A. Knopf
    Alternative Book Press
    Andrews McMeel Publishing
    Animals
    Anthea Bell
    Aqueous Books
    Art
    Ashland Creek Press
    Autumn House Press
    Bedazzled Ink Publishing
    Belleview Literary Press
    Bellevue
    Berlin Wall
    Black Lawrence Press
    Book Review
    Bottom Dog Press
    Brassbones And Rainbows
    Button Poetry
    Cake Train Press
    Catholic Guilt
    Chapbook
    Chris-rakunas
    Chronic Illness
    Coffee House Press
    Cold War
    Collection
    Coming Of Age
    Copper Canyon Press
    Divertir Publishing
    Drama
    Elroy Bode
    Ernest Hilbert
    Essays
    Eugen Ruge
    Fading Light
    Fairy Tales
    Family
    Farm
    Fat Dog Books
    Father
    Feminism
    Fiction
    Flash
    Furniture Press Books
    Future Tense Books
    Gdr
    Gender
    Geology
    Glassworks Book Review
    Gospel
    Greywolf Press
    Haiti
    Harbor Mountain Press
    Haute Surveillance
    Hepner
    Historical Fiction
    Holocaust
    Howling Bird Press
    Humor
    Identity
    Imagery
    Immigration
    Jacquline Doyle
    Jaded Ibis Press
    Johanne Goransson
    Journalism
    Jude Ezeilo
    Katya Apekina
    Language
    Lee L. Krecklow
    Lewis Hine
    LGBT
    Literature
    Lori Ann Stephens
    Memoir
    Mental Health
    #MeToo
    Midsummer Night's Press
    Midwest
    Milkweed Editions
    Mixed Media
    Modern Poetry
    Multi Genre
    Multi-genre
    Nature
    Nature Writing
    Nonfiction
    Novalee And The Spider Secret
    Novel
    Other Press
    Painting
    Poetry
    Poetry Prize
    Poetry Review
    Politics
    Press 53
    Prose Poetry
    Race
    Red Bird Chapbooks
    Red Hen Press
    Relationships
    Richard Siken
    Sarah Caulfield
    Sexuality
    Shechem Press
    Shirley Bradley Leflore
    Short Story
    Sickness
    Social Issues
    Son
    Sonnet
    Spine
    Spoken Word
    Steve Royek
    Stories
    Surveillance
    Susanne Dyckman
    Suspense
    Tarpaulin Sky
    Tears For The Mountian
    Tolsun Books
    Torrey House Press
    Tragedy
    Travel
    Twodollarradio
    University Of Utah Press
    University Press
    Unmitzer
    Unnamed Press
    Violence
    William Glassley
    Wings Press
    Winter Goose Publishing
    Women
    World War II

    RSS Feed

Picture

260 Victoria Street • Glassboro, New Jersey 08028 
glassworksmagazine@rowan.edu

All Content on this Site
(C) 2021 glassworks