Reviews

“ ‘Communication’ is a registry of modern longings,” writes media theorist John Durham Peters in Speaking Into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication. “The term evokes a utopia where nothing is misunderstood, hearts are open, and …

The opening pages of Lindsey Harding’s Pilgrims 2.0 introduce a world that is familiar, but slightly off-kilter. A cruise ship is being prepared to set sail, only the purpose of this trip is reinvention. The Canterbury Cruise Line promises to …

Today in China the events of 1989 in Tiananmen Square are a taboo subject. They’re not taught in textbooks or memorialized in museums. Many young people don’t even know about the “June 4th incident,” as it’s referred to in China, …

Elysha Chang’s debut novel, A Quitter’s Paradise (recently released in paperback), is populated by people who hold back—people who have made a tactic of restraint so that they might harbor a sense of safety. This is a way of self-preservation …

In February, the Association of Writers and Writing Programs held its annual conference in Kansas City, Missouri. Like so many writers with a first book newly published, I wanted to capitalize on the confluence of students and teachers, authors and …

A trace is a small, but non-negligible amount of a thing implying a larger amalgam of it elsewhere. A trace is a presence, however miniscule, that points away from itself toward an absence. Say, a fallen autumn leaf that conjures …

Cheat with the wrong woman, and you may find a bunny boiling in your kitchen. Such is the enduring legacy of 1987’s Fatal Attraction and fount of the shorthand for modern infidelity’s consequences. The 2023 television series of the same …

Both of Alison Rumfitt’s novels open with a content warning. As well as flagging potentially distressing material, these warnings function as upfront statements of Aboutness. “Tell Me I’m Worthless is a book about two things, primarily, and those things …

I keep fighting off awareness that my imaginative life has been stuck in a rut for a long time. When one dismisses specific contemporary volumes of poetry, one can blame the authors. When one persistently rejects such poetry, one has …