Category: Literary Fiction

Book Review: We Are Dreams in the Eternal Machine by Deni Ellis Béchard

personby Amy Casey
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We Are Dreams in the Eternal Machine by Deni Ellis Béchard

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


WE ARE DREAMS IN THE ETERNAL MACHINE by Deni Ellis Béchard is a grieving. It’s a labyrinth, it’s a lullaby, it’s a night terror. The way this novel looks at the explosive potential of technological innovation, political violence, censorship, and human ingenuity is a lasting, stalking presence. I love the way this book asks what we as human beings might one day build, break, or think we deserve, and what the thing we built might decide to do instead. Left me uneasy, but in awe.



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Book Review: From the Wreck by Jane Rawson

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From the Wreck by Jane Rawson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book was insane. Fabulism meets historical fiction meets generational drama/trauma meets cultural commentary meets well-meaning alien life forms who just kind of accidentally muck things up big time. Fascinating!



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Book Review: Blob – A Love Story by Maggie Su

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Blob: A Love Story by Maggie Su

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


BLOB: A LOVE STORY is a gelatinous and generous debut from Maggie Su. The fantastical premise–what if you could mold a sentient blob into the ideal partner?–is grounded by the nightmare of being in one’s moorless early twenties. The protagonist’s life is a study of despair. Humor pervades the unraveling in a way that cuts through to confront the reader, daring us to ask if hitting rock bottom can or should be laughed away, asking us to consider if our vices and hurts can ever be evicted from the childhoods where they were formed. Within a fever-dream of a plot, Su raises interesting questions about cruelty, autonomy, bodies, and goodness.



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Book Review: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

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Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


My first time reading this classic. Opulent, stirring, gothic, richly romantic, incredibly dramatic, and tense with emotion, JANE EYRE has captured at least one more heart. Passion over pragmatism reigns here, but also a fierce case for devoted love on equal ground, where both partners are intellectually engaged, free, and can speak openly. (After all the secrets get spilled, that is.)



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Book Review: Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield

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Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


OUR WIVES UNDER THE SEA broke me a little bit, but wow was it good. A tale as insidious as it is inventive, and as much surrealism as it is a life drawing, this story is a slow-burn time bomb. Anxiety, devotion, grief, and ghosts… sink into this one and expect to fall down further than you might be prepared to go. I adore the absurd, especially when it’s taken extremely seriously, and that’s exactly what this is.



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Book Review: Idaho by Emily Ruskovich

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Idaho by Emily Ruskovich

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Snatched IDAHO, a 2017 debut by Emily Ruskovich, out of a Little Free Library in my neighborhood. I was gently stunned by the author’s superhuman command of language and ability to break a heart with every sentence, binge reading it in one weekend. Ruskovich started with a haunted place she couldn’t explain and imagined decades of time and an entire community of characters that spring up around one hypothetical moment of tragedy. And it feels so brilliantly real, it’s almost impossible to describe. This book is agonizing in the greatest way. I don’t even know… speechless!



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Book Review: Orbital by Samantha Harvey

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Orbital by Samantha Harvey

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


ORBITAL is one of so many, many books that I’ve read which are set in space. But it is the very first book I’ve read which, in the reading of it, feels like actually being in space. Dreamlike, cyclical, removed, focused, questing, massive and tiny, lost and tethered. More like a poem than a novel, it’s a view from above. A unique read that takes its own strange time to say what it has to say.



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Book Review: Singer Distance by Ethan Chatagnier

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Singer Distance by Ethan Chatagnier

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


SINGER DISTANCE by Ethan Chatagnier is a story that recognizes how incredible minds approach problems from angles that are anything but straight-on. Much the same, Chatagnier gives us a story of mathematical brilliance focused not on the genius herself, but on the complementary mind most oriented to her despite all her human failings, resulting in a propulsive scientific mystery that is also a generous love story, one that contends with personal histories in a way that feels radically like home even within an alternative historical timeline a few hops over from our own. What a book.



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Book Review: The Museum of Human History by Rebekah Bergman

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The Museum of Human History by Rebekah Bergman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Rebekah Bergman’s THE MUSEUM OF HUMAN HISTORY is a spellbinding study of how people reckon with the most powerful force in our lives: time. Through touching and inventive vignettes spotlighting a handful of households inhabiting the same town, Bergman asks what any of us might risk or leverage to stop time, and the roles of our bodies, our memories, and life’s artifacts in the attempt.



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Book Review: How to Walk on Water by Rachel Swearingen

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How to Walk on Water and Other Stories by Rachel Swearingen

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I recently had the pleasure of hearing Rachel Swearingen read from her newest short fiction and immediately knew I was in the presence of power. This book is further proof. In her story collection HOW TO WALK ON WATER, Swearingen’s talent is on brilliant display, unearthing complex and cutting realities. Her unpredictable (and often delightfully unhinged) characters feel so damn real, you’ll be pulling out your high school yearbook to look up their names.



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