​Dead in Long Beach, California by Venita Blackburn is a novel about a writer, Coral, who finds her brother had committed suicide in his apartment. In the ensuing week, Coral attempts to keep her brother, Jay, alive by texting Jay’s daughter and girlfriend. Coral gets herself into increasingly more precarious situations as she pretends to be Jay in making plans, ghosting, and creating online profiles. In the meantime, Coral goes on a few dates with women where she’s become a serial liar, changing what she does for work and her personality. However, on one date that takes place at a no-kill shelter, Coral confesses what she’s been keeping a secret to a dog while her date overhears. This causes Coral to begin making amends by meeting with Jay’s girlfriend, though she gets cold feet and leaves before anything is revealed. Then, Coral decides to return to Jay’s place where his daughter is staying, and is unable to contain the suspicion. Coral goes through a drive-thru coffee shop, and the ghosts of her family come to interact with her one last time before she must abandon her farce. Finally, on the walk up to the apartment, Coral doesn’t need to say anything for the secret to be revealed to the daughter.
 
Along with the narrative of Coral trying to cover up and pretend Jay hasn’t died, the novel is narrated by the alien characters of Coral’s book. They act as supreme and observant anthropologists from the future in their attempt to make meaning out of Coral’s actions and thoughts. The novel also contains excerpts of Coral’s novel along with snippets of fan fiction, all in the same tone as the main narrative. The excerpts describe an unnamed character (which parallels that of Coral’s life) in which a debt collector arrests people who have not paid their debts. On the whole, I really enjoyed the voice the novel carries, an almost distant and curious tone which feels appropriate for alien observers. The reasoning behind Coral’s cover-up seems to be alluded to in the voice where she wanted more time with Jay, and therefore concocted a world in which that could be the case.
 
Final Rating: 4.5/5

​The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada is a novel about three workers who all have strange jobs that soon become meaningless. One works as a paper shredder, another works as a copy editor for factory documents, and the third studies the moss growing around the factory. Their lives are surrounded by the meaningless tasks that are set out before them. The man who studies the moss, at one point put on a moss hunting event for children, where a grandfather and boy joined in. The day after, they ask the man to read and edit the kid’s school project about unique animals within the factory. The man reluctantly agrees, and eventually after reading about the Factory Shag, the man decides to photograph them. At the same time, the paper shredder is asked to take a day off, so she walks to a bridge on the factory premises and meets the man who studies moss.
 
The novel relies on its strangeness to propel the narrative along. Questions that arise from its strangeness were What does the factory actually do? What do their jobs have to do with anything? Why are there so many strange creatures around? Did the paper shredder woman actually turn into a bird in the end? I particularly enjoyed the kid’s report on the Washer Lizards, and generally got the vibe of the slightly surreal, slightly macabre aspect of modern workplace life. Though quite different, the workplace strangeness reminds me of the show Severance, in that the purpose of what the workers do is obscured, seemingly done for no other reason than to give people a salary. The Factory also jumps POVs between the three characters and I found it worked particularly well when the two workers met on the bridge. The novel overall was a fun and quick read.
 
Overall Rating: 4.5/5

​American Short Fiction Issue 80 is a collection of short stories that are sometimes quiet, sometimes blaringly loud. In Joshua Henkin’s ‘Outer Boroughs’, a daughter is trying to buy a car at the behest of her cancer-stricken father. In Laura Grothaus’s ‘A Place Where Sadness Cannot Go’, a babysitter watches over Eli, a child who gets bullied and has a robotic dog that tries to fix him. And in Matthew Lawrence Garcia’s ‘Harmony’, a high schooler learns that his best friend, C, was sexually assaulted after boxing practice. These stories in particular were painful in a quiet, but meaningful way.
 
Final Rating: 4.5/5

​Erasure by Percival Everett is a novel about a writer, Monk, who, after many failed attempts to get his current manuscript published, decides to capitulate to stereotypes of the Black community by writing a novel that satirizes his contemporaries. He needs the money after his sister, an abortion doctor, is murdered and his mother’s Alzheimer’s begins to consume her. Monk’s older brother as well is having money troubles after his affair with another man leads to his divorce and little custody with his children. Monk sees the success of another Black writer, Jaunita Mae Jenkins, whose novel, We’s Lives in Da Ghetto, is massively successful but completely stereotypical and uninformed. Monk is so fed up with seeing that novel garner attention, he decides to write his own, satirizing Jenkins and the institutions that prop her writing up. He pens the novel, Fuck, under a pseudonym, Stagg R. Leigh. When Monk sends the manuscript to his agent, his agent is super wary of his reputation being smeared. Though, very quickly, the novel gets bought for six hundred thousand dollars, with the film rights being sold after for three million. Monk is astounded at how the world thinks Stagg’s novel is “raw”, but due to financial constraints, he decides to go with the act. Monk is then put on an award committee, where soon all the judges rave about Fuck, picking it as their winner. At the end, Monk has become fed up with how everyone doesn’t see how terrible of a novel Fuck is, so when Stagg is called up to receive the award, Monk goes up to reveal he was the real author. Other plotlines involve Monk’s mother’s health worsening, Monk’s brother being in and out in their mother’s time of need, the housekeeper marrying a guard from their summer home neighborhood, and Monk’s fling with a neighbor from their summer home.
 
One of the most notable things in Erasure is that the novel, Fuck, isn’t just referenced in the novel, but it’s fully written in it. A novel within a novel. This allows for the reader to truly understand the breadth of satire that Monk is trying to achieve. Everett isn’t afraid to insert whole lectures, Monk’s CV, a scene of a Black man on a game show, and bits of other novel ideas. It’s a somewhat experimental and metafictional text. And while I initially found the game show moment to be odd (it’s a whole different character and situation), it showed that the Black man was supposed to be someone who lost the game show with difficult questions, while the white man he was competing with had simple questions. The novel at times is humorous and strange, but that’s what I felt enhanced the absurdity of everyone loving Stagg’s novel.
 
Final Rating: 4.5/5

​Paradise by Toni Morrison is a novel about a town called Ruby where a handful of Black families created to be away from white America. The families had initially broken off from another town called New Haven, but still felt unsafe so moved farther into isolation. Next to the town there was a large mansion which had been built years before their arrival, which was then turned into a school of nuns, and finally a convent of women. For years, the convent slowly collected women who’d come from hard lives (a woman who accidently killed her twins in a parked car on a hot day, a woman who grew up in the school and stayed to take care of their Reverend Mother, in addition to others). The convent and Ruby were on positive terms where the women sold hot peppers, though problems arise when the men of Ruby start believing that the convent is evil. So a group of men, go into the convent and murder most of the women in cold blood. Some of the women get away and try to make a life elsewhere. But the people and the life in Ruby has become marred by the men’s actions.
 
Morrison starts the novel off fast-paced with the men entering and slaughtering the women in the convent. Then, we get accounts of all the women who find their way to the convent, trying to make a life out of the rubble of their lives. We get to see the stirrings of Ruby, how K.D. tried to get with one of the women, how Deek had an affair with another woman in the convent, and the history of Ruby itself. I truly felt immersed in this town with all of its legends and gossip and growing disdain for the convent. It’s a novel not only about the violent ways in which America treats its Black citizens, but also in how that violence perpetuates itself through misogyny and fear.
 
Final Rating: 4.5/5

​A Personal Matter by Kenzaburō Ōe is a novel about a cram-school teacher, Bird, whose son is born with a brain hernia and Bird’s attempt at dealing with its ramifications. On the night of his son’s birth, Bird is not with his wife, but is instead buying maps to Africa, where he’s had a desire to go to. While waiting, he also gets in a fight with a street gang who initially thinks he’s an easy man to rob. Though, when his son is finally born, he’s told there’s something wrong. So, he rushes to the hospital where the doctor tells him of the brain hernia and that they can’t take care of the child. Instead, the child is taken to another hospital where the doctors try to stabilize it before surgery. After seeing the horror of his child, he goes to his father-in-law, who’s a professor, and tells him of the child. Knowing of Bird’s alcoholic past, his father-in-law gives him a bottle of Johnny Walker and sends him on his way. This is where Bird begins to spiral, where he goes to his old friend, Himiko, who he once raped in a lumber yard. He tries to push out the idea of the child by seeing Himiko, and they both get so drunk that the next day, Bird pukes in front of his cram-school class. Periodically, Bird checks in with his son, at times hoping the son to be dead so that he doesn’t have to tell his wife of their son’s defect. At one point, Bird lies to his recovering wife saying that he doesn’t know what’s wrong with their child. Eventually, Bird returns to Himiko wanting to have sex with her, but can’t stop thinking about getting her pregnant until she suggests anal. They get closer, and at one point they come up with the plan to take the child from the hospital and have him murdered by a shady doctor Himiko knows, and then they can flee to Africa. So, they take the child from the hospital before it’s to be operated on and drive to the shady clinic. They drop the baby off and go to a gay bar which, coincidently, is the same name Bird reluctantly gave to the child. There, he sees an old friend who he once betrayed. Upon talking with his old friend, Bird realizes he can’t have a doctor kill his child. So, he races back in a taxi to the clinic. Weeks later, it turns out that brain hernia was only a benign tumor which was successfully operated on. Bird then takes on the responsibility of being a father, ending with hope and possibility for him.
 
Ōe instills violence and sex into this narrative that felt powerful and at times terrifying. The run in with the gang, the man who he’d searched for when he was younger, the continual desire for his son to be dead. It’s an interesting way to show how Bird tries to rationalize the fact he’d prefer a dead son over one with a disability. Another thing that was interesting to me was how Bird expressed his sexuality. In one of the first scenes, he sees a trans woman (the novel is much more transphobic/homophobic than what is published today) and he, “…felt a surge of affection for the young man masquerading as a large woman.” Where he, “…would probably lie around naked, as close as brothers, and talk. I’d be naked too so he wouldn’t feel any awkwardness.” Later on in the novel, when Bird can’t seem to get hard due to Himiko saying there’s a potential for her to get pregnant, she suggests anal. And in Bird’s mind, “…he had longed for the most malefic sex, a fuck rife with ignominy.” In that same moment, Himiko also asks if Bird ever had sex with one of his male students. And what’s more interesting is at the end, after dropping off the baby at the clinic, Himiko and Bird decide on going to a gay bar. While Bird has a wife and mistress, it’s interesting to note the way Ōe approaches sexuality in tones close to Yukio Mishima’s (i.e. violence, power, shame). The novel flashes forward a few weeks at the end where we get to see Bird seemingly as a new person where even the gang doesn’t seem to recognize him. Though, because the rest of the novel is set within a span of a few days and I personally like ambiguity, I wonder what the novel would’ve looked like had the narrative stopped the moment Bird gets in the taxi to go back to the clinic. By then, we know the change that has come over Bird, and I would’ve liked to stew in the unknown the same way the rest of the novel sat in. Though, on the whole I really enjoyed the novel and, in the context of Ōe’s own personal life (his own son being born with a mental disability), it may have been too sad of an ending for Ōe to consider.
 
Final Rating: 4.5/5

​Ploughshares Vol. 50, No. 2 is a collection of stories guest edited by Rebecca Makkai spanning the lives of sperm donor children, cancer diagnoses, a video store robbery, and a child with a frog heart. The stories I particularly enjoyed—and there were many—were ‘Rooms’ by Molly Anders, ‘Frog Heart’ by Joy Deva Baglio, ‘Video Wonderland, How Can I Help You?’ by Diana Cao, ‘Goodbye, Raymond Carver’ by Jane Delury, ‘Prolific Donor’ by Peter Mountford, and ‘Gaps and Silences’ by Suzanne Roberts. Though, the story with the greatest impact was ‘Back-up Mom’ by Janice Furlong which is about a gay woman who doesn’t have a desire to have kids. However, her sister, a doctor, has recently and suddenly left her husband with their child. The sister continues to pull away from her family, and has an outburst at her son’s birthday party. Eventually, the son stays more often with the narrator until one weekend the narrator realizes her sister is about to kill herself. The narrator then finds her sister puking due to an overdose of Valium. At the end, the son stays more often with the narrator, and her ideas of parenthood slowly morph through the story. It was a powerful and heartbreaking story to read with the way the narrator at first views her nephew. Overall, I was floored with the stories in this issue, in both their range and their emotion.
 
Final Rating: 4.5/5

​Role Play by Clara Drummond is a novel about Vivian Noronha, a curator as well as daughter to a well-off family in Brazil. She sees herself as middle class, though has servants and her family owns multiple properties, putting her firmly in the wealthy class. Throughout the novel, Vivian goes to parties, does drugs, has sex, and lives a life of a Brazilian elite. Though, under the surface there are problems: Vivian grew up in a conservative household where sex was taboo, had medical problems with her eyesight, and was put on medication for her depression. There’s a moment where her cousin, Albertinho (whose father is actually the one supplying Vivian’s family with money), makes her drink until she blacks out because she doesn’t want to answer his invasive questions. Then, one night at a party, one of the usual vendors selling beer, Darlene, doesn’t appear. Vivian asks another vendor, and it turns out Darlene had died. This causes Vivian, not necessarily to feel pity for Darlene, but to think about Vivian’s life in context to Darlene’s. At the end of the novel, Vivian has rough sex with Luiz Felipe, in a way to work through her feelings both in relation to Darlene and to her family.
 
Drummond provides a really strong and nearly satirical voice to Vivian, which shows on the outside she’s a strong, rich woman. Though, on the inside has loads of insecurities that materialize in the way she approaches sex and partying. It’s a really interesting look into the lives of the elite, and the problems that they encounter.
 
Final Rating: 4.5/5

​Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters is a novel about a trans woman, Reese, a once trans woman, Ames (Amy), and Katrina discussing and prepping to have a child together. Reese and Ames used to date when Ames had once been Amy, a trans woman. However, when Reese begins to secretly date a married man, Stanley, and Amy finds out, their relationship turns sour. This creates a rift in their relationship, and is one of the suspicions Reese has of Amy’s detransition: that Amy was scared not of being a woman, but of how others saw her. Ames then comes back into Reese’s life after he gets his boss pregnant and isn’t up to being a parent, so decides to enlist Reese, who really wants to be a mother, in raising Katrina’s child. As they get to know each other, Katrina invites Reese to an essential oil party where Katrina reveals to her friends that she’s pregnant and Reese reveals that she’s trans. Then, at a dinner later that day, they are at a restaurant when a man Reese recognizes, her boyfriend, arrives to the dinner as the husband to one of Katrina’s friends. This causes Katrina to truly question Reese as a person, and whether she would be fit to be included in her family. Eventually, after an angry email, and a walk into the frigid ocean, Reese tries to convince Katrina to keep the child, though Katrina is already at this point apprehensive. Though, the novel ends at this moment before the abortion appointment, with the rest of what happens being implied.
 
I really liked the frankness of the novel as well as the way Peters weaves in the past and present. It feels as though I’m getting a close look at the intricacies of queer relationships, how people view them, and what it means to be a person. Peters shows her characters, not as the quintessentially perfect queers some media tends to do, but as people who make mistakes and have to owe up to their actions. It’s a beautiful rendition of what it means to desire motherhood, exist as trans, and what people will do to fight for created families.
 
Final Rating: 4.5/5

​Blackouts by Justin Torres is a novel about a young man returning to the bedside of an older gay gentleman who is dying. It’s a story framed within the context of both a conversation as well as archival images and text that is blacked out. The discussions of the men range from the author and researcher, Jan Gay, and her work in the book Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns all the way to their own lives, their sexual encounters, and loves they experienced. In the end, the old man, Juan, begins to forget everything, and then dies in the young man’s arms one night.
 
What Torres does absolutely well here is the blurring of fiction and non-fiction—of lies and truth. Jan, the book, the studies, and some of the characters are firmly from history. However, Torres plays with us when the speaker discusses Juan and if he ever met/talked with him. Though, I don’t feel that whether Juan existed or not is what’s important, rather it was the connection the speaker and Juan had and their conversations which provided an outlet for them to digest their lives. I also found some of the novel’s framing to be interesting, particularly when they start describing their lives and memories as movie scenes. The novel feels as though we are peeking into such private moments, and I appreciate the vulnerability and humor of the characters.
 
Final Rating: 4.5/5