News

Anthony Howell is clearly having a good time in this Fortnightly Review article, “The University of Closed Minds: On Julian Stannard":

“Julian Stannard’s novel combines SF and satire. But the story it tells happily wanders off into Rabelaisian humour, fireworks of vocabulary and exuberant nonsense. Here William Burroughs meets C.P. Snow. Stannard is a poet, and his novel is the sort of book the reader can open anywhere and enjoy the lighting switches from one sentence to the next, the elusive allusive phrases…. The narrative is a clothesline hung with flimsy characters, often shat-upon by their robot hybrid pets, and it glories in its adjectival and acronymic subject clusters—breaking most of the rules about adjectives churned out so thoughtlessly by writing workshops. But the novel does not neglect drama…. Well worth a read, Brave New World for academia, if you like.”

—Anthony Howell, in The Fortnightly Review

In Gnome Appreciation Society, Jason Denness raves over Lee Upton’s Tabitha, Get Up:

“Far more experimental than your run of the mill romance novel…. crammed with brilliant characters…. There are some challenging scenes of loneliness and depression and even at its darkest moments Tabitha’s humour shines through. There is a real nuttiness to this book…. Tabitha is the sort of person you can see bits of yourself in…. Moving away from chapter structures we have notes, lists, voicemails, texts, therapy sessions, email exchanges and panic attacks…. The funniest book I have read this year and it is gonna take some beating. Highly recommended.”

—Jason Denness, in Gnome Appreciation Society

Patrick Maxwell on Devin Jacobsen’s stories:

“If for nothing else, you should read Devin Jacobsen’s short story collection The Summer We Ate Off the China for its wonderful prose…. We are in a similar, slightly deranged world to the early stories of Will Self. The grains of the ordinary are inverted and perverted…. This is a book about language and its power, and the more enjoyable and interesting for it.”

—Patrick Maxwell, in The Big Issue

A review of Devin Jacobsen’s The Summer We Ate Off the China:

“[Devin Jacobsen has a] willingness to experiment. He’s not afraid to take out the English language for rambling country drives, his excursions sometimes touched by hairpin turns…. Perhaps no one since John Kennedy Toole has marshaled such a menagerie of characters and settings to tell a tale.”

—Danny Heitman, in The Times-Picayune

Publishers Weekly chimes in about David Collard’s upcoming A Crumpled Swan:

“[Collard’s] meticulous exegesis illustrates how even a brief poem can contain untold layers of meaning. It’s a rousing celebration of the power of literature.”

—Publishers Weekly

In the Village Voice, A review of Devin Jacobsen’s The Summer We Ate Off the China:

“A terrific collection—wide, deep, and way hipper than John Irving. Jacobsen writes about big issues and small towns, but he always writes beautifully…. a writer worth discovering.”

—Gideon Leek, in The Village Voice

Kirkus Reviews on David Collard’s forthcoming collection of fifty essays on poetry, A Crumpled Swan:

“50 brief, illuminating essays melding memoir, close reading, literary analysis, and cultural criticism…. Collard’s insightful essays reveal him, as well, as a sympathetic presence, sensitive and wise. Fresh, perceptive literary essays.”

—Kirkus Reviews

In Write Now Philly, Ronan Brinkley “explores ownership vs. love” in C.J. Spataro’s More Strange Than True:

“Short, strange and sweet, More Strange Than True will break your heart and sew it back together again.”

—Ronan Brinkley, in Write Now Philly

Jackie Law weighs in on Kat Meads’ While Visiting Babette in Never Imitate:

“While Visiting Babette is an intriguing novelette that sends the reader down a rabbit hole reminiscent of wonderland. Unlike Alice’s experiences, the various characters are human albeit with habits and outlooks that remain unexplained. This never detracts from what is a largely surreal snapshot of life inside a locked facility as experienced by the inmates…. Their world is one of doors and windows, of ponds and insects. There are games and stories, most of which make little sense except to the players. And yet the reader is carried through each of their thoughts and pursuits. Moments of violence are mostly tempered with a dash of piquant humour…. Original but also engaging. A rare little story that rewards careful reading.”

—Jackie Law, in Never Imitate

Books by Women has published an essay by Kat Meads about writing her novella, While Visiting Babette:

“Not to give too much of the plot away: someone does try to escape in While Visiting Babette. And that someone succeeds.”