Tag: Metafiction

Black Wave

February 14, 2017 by Drew

The Short Version: It’s the late 1990s and the world is ending. Literally. But Michelle rambles through her days like any other days, drinking and fucking and doing drugs, all with a gently gnawing sense of needing (wanting? believing?) something else. She uproots from San Francisco and heads to LA, where the apocalypse really kicks in – but so too does her sense of being. The Review: Sometimes a book strikes unexpectedly, stopping you in your tracks – or, in my […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: 1990s, Amethyst Editions, Apocalypse, Autofiction, Black Wave, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Feminist Press, Fiction, LA, Los Angeles, Memoir, Metafiction, Michelle Tea, Queer, Queer Fiction, review, Reviews, The Tournament of Books 2017

Moonglow

January 23, 2017 by Drew

The Short Version: A young man named Michael Chabon sits with his grandfather in the weeks before his death, hearing stories about his life. He takes these stories, in turn, and creates a narrative out of them – but, as he expresses at the beginning, the reader might do well to question how much is true and how much is fiction… The Review: The trickery begins before you’ve even started reading the book. Open it, flip page by page – […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: Autofiction, Biography, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Fiction, Indiespensable, Literature, Memoir, Metafiction, Michael Chabon, Moonglow, Non-Fiction, Reviews, Space, The Tournament of Books 2017

The Mark and the Void

December 7, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: Claude is an analyst at an Irish bank just after the financial crash when he meets an author, Paul Murray. Paul maybe wants to write a book about Claude – but he’s got a strange way of doing it, and slowly these two men are pulled into a narrative that is, perhaps, being created as we read it… The Review: It’s hard to make financial writing flashy or sexy. There are your pop-science type books, like The Big […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: Banking, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Fiction, Humor, Ireland, Literature, Metafiction, Paul Murray, review, Reviews, Satire, The Mark and the Void

Roundup, October 2016

October 31, 2016 by Drew

The Grownup by Gillian Flynn 3 out of 5 The Short Version: A young woman on the margins, working as a fraudulent psychic, lands a gig investigating a creepy house and creepy child for another woman. What ensues is a classic gothic battle for sanity. The Review: Flynn’s voice is unmistakeable and it was great to hear it again, seeing as it’s been awhile since Gone Girl and we’re likely to have to wait a while longer yet for her next […]

Categories: Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Literature, Mystery, Non-Fiction, Poetry • Tags: A Head Full of Ghosts, A Thousand Mornings, A Visit to October Country, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Contagion, Dana I. Wolff, Disease, Exorcism, Fiction, Gillian Flynn, Heidi Julavits, Horror, Literature, Mary Oliver, Metafiction, Mikhail Bulgakov, North Brother Island, Novella, Paul Tremblay, Peace, Poetry, Psychics, Religion, Review Roundup, Reviews, Roundup, Russia, Speculative, Stalin, The Devil, The Grownup, The Master and Margarita, The Prisoner of Hell Gate, The Vanishers, Thriller, Typhoid Mary

The Devil in America

October 12, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: A elliptical tale of a black family shortly after the Civil War, of the magic that runs in their bloodline, and of the horrors both magical and mundane that stalked the world in the 1870s. The Review: I picked this up at the Tor Publishing fall party, as I was wandering around the bar full of awkward nerdy types and checking out what book swag the publisher had laid out before us. Part of me was fascinated […]

Categories: Fantasy, Fiction, Literature • Tags: Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Kai Ashante Wilson, Literature, Metafiction, Mythology, Novella, review, Reviews, Slavery, The Devil in America, Tor.com

Animal Money

September 9, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: Five economists at a conference in Latin America all receive injuries that keep them from the conference at large. In their conversations, they develop the idea of animal money – a currency that is qualitative as opposed to quantitative and also alive. The world quickly begins to spin out of control, as does the narrative, all because of one idea… The Review: Imagine a generic sci-fi B-movie. The scientist is in his lab, readying the latest attempt at some […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature, Sci-Fi • Tags: Animal Money, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Economics, Fantasy, Fiction, Lazy Fascist Press, Literature, Metafiction, Michael Cisco, review, Reviews, Sci-Fi, Science Fiction, Speculative, Speculative Fiction, Surreal, Surrealism

Pricksongs and Descants

August 29, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: A series of strange and wild tales, with elements of fairy tales, mythology, horror, and more – but all wrapped up in a puzzle-box of metafictional style, creating one of the most distinct reading experiences readers have ever had. The Review: It’s a little strange to think about metafiction as a “new” concept, as for a reader today it seems to’ve always been around. Just off the top of my head, Mark Z. Danielewski, Alexandra Kleeman, César Aira, […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature, Short Stories • Tags: Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Fantasy, Fiction, Fictions, Literature, Metafiction, Pricksongs and Descants, review, Reviews, Robert Coover, Short Stories, Stories

Sweet Tooth

July 29, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: It’s 1972 and the Cold War is in full swing. England is still reeling from the discovery of the Cambridge 5 almost twenty years earlier. New plans are put in place by MI5 to encourage artists to make pro-Western materials – and new recruit Serena Frome is tapped to run author Tom Haley. But as she gets closer to Haley, she must keep truth and lie separate even as the world pushes her to come clean… The […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: 1970s, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Cold War, England, Fiction, Ian McEwan, Literature, Metafiction, Reviews, Spy, Sweet Tooth, The Great Vacation of 2016, Writing

The Seamstress and the Wind

April 14, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: When César Aira was a boy, a seamstress lived in his town and had a son about his age. When she believes that the son has disappeared, she jumps in a cab and tears off into the Argentinian countryside with a hilarious and fantastical set of pursuers that include her husband, an angry bride-to-be, the wind, and maybe even the author himself… The Review: After falling under Aira’s spell with An Episode in the Life of a Landscape […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: Argentina, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, César Aira, Fantastical, Fantasy, Fiction, Literature, Magical Realism, Metafiction, New Directions, Reviews, Rosalie Knecht, Surrealism, The Seamstress and the Wind, TNBBC, Translation, Writing

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Raging Biblio-holism

The overwhelming urge to collect, consume, and consider books