As ever, an invaluable snapshot of the small-press scene.
The famed literary annual stares 50 in the face.
The Pushcart anthology has always been admirably open to comers from all backgrounds, and if more of the contributors here are connected to creative writing departments than not, that’s just the way of the writing world these days. A noteworthy exception, Ann Chinnis—an emergency physician—turns in a richly metaphorical poem encouraging young women to “Ignore [their] brother’s laughter / Then go find a pony.” The late Charles Simic knew where he was going, hoping, in a short lyric, “To place one last chip / On this dark night’s / Spinning roulette wheel.” Death is a constant preoccupation of many writers here, as when Nishanth Injam delivers an affecting portrait of a mother, gifted at finding lost things, who leaves her child at a loss for direction when she dies: “Lost somewhere in her trachea: a phrase that would tell me how to live this life.” On matters of life and death, two pieces are especially perceptive. One, a brilliant essay in the form of a set of definitions, finds Abby Manzella writing of the demise of a Pennsylvania coal town, while in another essay Leslie Jill Patterson hauntingly describes the all-too-common American way of death by assault rifle, with bullets that “broke all the bones in the middle of her face, shredded her brain, tore through her abdomen, collapsed her right lung, and splintered her spinal cord.” Another highlight of many comes when the elegant Joyce Carol Oates swears like a stevedore as she peeks into a Carveresque working-class home: “Mick had a temper quick to flare up as a struck match, can’t blame Mick on his feet eight hours of the Goddamned day, if overtime as many as ten, twelve fuckin hours at a shit-job he hated where he had to wear a fuckin olive-gray uniform like a fuckin janitor.”
As ever, an invaluable snapshot of the small-press scene.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9798985469752
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Pushcart
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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