​Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash is a novel that follows the Flynn family through strange and ridiculous situations involving the three daughters, Abigail, Harper, and Louise. The mother, Catherine, begins an affair with their neighbor after the father, Bud, has become a lackluster companion. His job as a port accountant for the richest man in town is boring and as he learns of his wife’s infidelity his job tells him to join a group at the church for wandering souls called Lost Lambs. All while this is happening, one of the daughters is messaging a man online who goads her into creating a bomb for a beauty pageant, another is dating a security guard for the richest man in town, and the third is so smart she begins to believe that there is a ship that goes missing from Bud’s accounting. Bud begins to have an affair with the leader of Lost Lambs to get back at Catherine. He also takes his job more seriously, following the tip of his daughter, and realizes that a yearly shipment is always redacted from the records. When he begins to look into it further, the rich man, Paul Alabaster, personally pays him off. The other sister, Abigail, falls so much in love with her security guard boyfriend that when she gets an invitation to the Alabaster mansion, she believes her boyfriend will be there. It turns out that she was brought to the mansion so that Alabaster could take her blood to revitalize himself age-wise. It happens at an annual party that has an Eyes Wide Shut vibe where very rich and powerful men drink the blood of young girls, namely the girls that were trafficked in the redacted shipments. Though, the other two sisters find out this is happening and bust in with the boyfriend to rescue their sister and the trafficked girls. In the end, Paul Alabaster gets by unscathed but the girls are able to be free.
 
Lost Lambs has an insane plot and smaller subplots that are so ridiculous and intertwined it’s amazing at how they can all fit within one novel. The details themselves are so specific and strange and striking. Take for example the neighbor’s ceramic vaginas, or Tibet the character being named after where she was conceived. There is one really cool syntactic thing Cash does, which is that in the story a church is overrun by gnats. And those gnats aren’t just referenced, but stuck themselves into the language. So instead of, say, “nation”, the story would say, “gnation”. In effect creating an annoyance on the page similar to the infestation the church was facing. Then when the church is fumigated, this intentional misspelling disappears. It’s details like that that make Lost Lambs so engaging. That and the voice, which has this sarcastic and dry humor that teases the characters and situations. Such a fun read!
 
Final Rating: 4.5/5

​Rogue Astronaut by Mitchell Jacobs is a collection of poems selected by Patricia Smith as a finalist for the Miller Williams Poetry Prize. It roughly follows the speaker’s father’s supposed alien abduction, the near fatal suicide attempt of the brother, and the speaker’s queer life with past lovers. The collection is themed around monsters and sci-fi such as The Thing, while also using religious imagery as the context for the speaker’s life. The language is exacting and humorous, seen most specifically in the poems, ‘Foreplay’, and ‘My Ex-Boyfriend Asks to Make a Silicone Replica So He Can Take Me with Him When He Moves Abroad’. Where in the former, “kneed” versus “need” are contemplated during an accidental bump during sex and the later for its premise and execution. Other poems that delighted me were ‘Mirror’, ‘Jesus Watches Me Get My Ass Swabbed’, ‘Ministration for the French Horn’, and ‘Hypnos’. Though, amongst all the humor, the speaker is dealing with his brother’s attempt at jumping off a building in ‘Apse with Stained Glass Triptych of the Crucifixion’. This poem has an interesting form, where the stanzas are squished into rectangles alongside three photos, effectively creating the feeling that the words written are coming through a phone screen. Quite an extraordinary read!
 
Final Rating: 4.5/5

​Blue Loop by AJ White is a collection of poems about addiction and recovery, the pain and struggles, and the transformative heat created by a star’s “blue loop”. White’s poems are like star clusters connected by strands of dark matter, where they reference, remix, and relive the moments the speaker drinks to excess—to addiction. And then, to being, “sober 8 weeks / for the first time in 8 years…” to then later go to rehab. One such instance, is the set of ‘Blue Loop’ poems which are centos of the other poems in the collection. For example, the line, “when you held my hand & loved me” from the first ‘Blue Loop’ is used in the last poem ‘I Was Here Before & Will Be Here Again’. This self-reference induces a type of reflection, a refrain that the speaker must tell themselves for them to understand and get through their addiction. Poems such as ‘Saturn Devouring His Son’ applies this type of repetition though its use of language in stanzas such as, “The darkness floats, glacial, / on larger bodies of dark— // from conscious lacking directive / from tenderly / from tenderize / from break in / from bind”. That is to say the poems themselves feel like they have been caught in their own loops over time and space, pulsing from cool to hot back to cool. And as such, this whole collection burns with a type of heat that can be seen twinkling in our atmosphere from millions of miles away.
 
Final Rating: 4.5/5

​The Paris Review Issue 235 is a collection of poetry, prose, interviews, art, and stage plays published essentially at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. I found the interview with Edward Hirsch to be quite funny and also enlightening. There were other pieces that enjoyed such as ‘The Loss of Heaven’ by Dantiel W. Moniz, and “1976: A Lyric, A Memory, A Lie, The Absolute Truth” by Mary Crockett Hill. Though the stand out story for me was ‘River Crossing’ by Jack Livings which is about this town that’s centered around trying to cross the river to another encampment that’s far livelier. However, the river is infested with killer hippos and alligators such that it’s almost impossible to cross. There’s lore about the town building billboards on the river to signal to the other side, and the main industry of the town is an idea generation of how to cross the river. There are also people who decide to trek to outposts higher up the river that takes multiple lifetimes to get word back about what’s going on up north. Essentially this town’s strangeness and customs surround the desire to cross the river. So one day when the narrator’s daughter wants to become one of the people trekking northward, the narrator and his wife freak out. They try to convince their daughter to stay, but she’s unwilling to change her mind. Eventually the wife asks to join the trek. But before they can do anything, the narrator decides to go to his brother who was hiding a possible way across the river: a mechanical hippo. The story ends with the narrator starting his crossing. It’s a strange story and reminds me of another story called ‘The Sleep’ by Caitlin Horrocks which involves a whole strange town. Overall, I found this issue quite delightful.
 
Final Rating: 4.5/5

​The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw is a collection of stories where Black women and daughters contend with religion, specifically the institution of the church, on sex, relationships, and desire. The stories are all interconnected, some loosely, some following a character at different parts of their lives. Though, all of them are interested in how desire can be shamed and used as a weapon in the context of God and worship. In particular, the stand-out story is ‘Peach Cobbler’ in which a daughter watches her mother bake a peach cobbler for their pastor who has a wife and son of his own. The story follows the daughter in her first believing the pastor is God, and then becoming envious of her mother’s cooking, all while she is learning about her own desires as a woman. When the pastor asks the daughter to tutor his son, she goes over but doesn’t want his money. Though, the son is a copy of his dad in that he is cheating on her. The story discusses womanhood/virginity/desire without fully mentioning it, but instead used the cobbler as a surrogate. In which the mother prepares the peach cobbler and the pastor hungrily eats it. In how Olivia, as she grows older, intends to bake her own cobbler. The story also hints at the pastor actually being Olivia’s father, which implies that she started developing feelings for her half-brother. Then, we return to this character in ‘Instructions for Married Christian Husbands’ where the speaker lays out how she wants to have sex. It parallels ‘Peach Cobbler’ so well because now that the character has come into her own, she has embodied what her mother was doing (i.e. letting a married man have sex with her). Other notable stories in the collection were ‘How to Make Love to a Physicist’, and ‘When Eddie Levert Comes’. A succinct, though powerful read.
 
Final Rating: 4.5/5

​Henry Henry by Allen Bratton is a novel about an heir, Hal Lancaster, who’s life has stagnated. After his mother died, his father, Henry, plans to remarry a French woman. Hal is the oldest son of the Lancasters and is set to inherit his father’s wealth and plots, though a dark secret between the two pushes Hal to use cocaine and keep everyone at arm’s length. This dark secret is that, starting at the age of thirteen, Henry sexually assaulted Hal which became a continuous thing even into Hal’s adulthood. All the while, Hal’s love life mostly consists of hook ups with an old actor, Poins, until Hal is shot in the face by his rival, Percy, at a shooting range. They kick off a love affair which burns hot, in part because Hal hasn’t fully gotten rid of his Catholic guilt, and for another his father’s abuse stays over him like a cloud. Hal attends parties and finds himself falling further and further down into addiction, while his father continues to abuse him whenever he is called. Though, through the understanding of what happened to Henry’s cousin, Richard, begins to kick-start Hal’s (not transformation, but possible retribution). One night, Hal tells Percy half the story, that someone abused him, which makes Percy attend Henry’s wedding and shout that Hal had been abused. Henry worries that Hal has told Percy everything, so sends him away to their other property. From there, Hal decides to get the full story of what happened to Richard, and so makes his way to Richard’s old lover, Edward. At Edward’s house, he tells the story of how Richard died from AIDS and that he was marked a pariah in the family and thus wasn’t buried in the same graveyard as the rest of the Lancasters. Henry, possibly worried he’d be found out, takes a lot of pills and drinks a lot of alcohol, and calls Hal to tell him to come over. Hal follows his directions, and arrives to his father passed out on the floor with his scabs are bloody. Hal cares for Henry and brings him back to health. Afterward, Hal decides to do Richard justice and returns to Henry with paperwork to get Richard’s body moved. In the end, Hal and his sister walk through the cemetery and then the old Lancaster Castle, thinking about how Richard’s legacy was returned to him.
 
The novel, as referenced in its name, provides a modern queering of Henry V’s youth. What is striking, and the most horrifying is Henry’s abuse to his son, which doesn’t necessarily seem to be sexually motivated, but rather power motivated. And that the whole time, Hal feels that it’s his fault, but doesn’t stop it even though in his adulthood he could. This type of relinquishing power also follows in Hal’s sexual relationship to Percy. Though, the revealing and understand of Richard’s story gives Hal a charge to change his own life. While it’s not specifically shown, the way Hal gets Henry to sign the paperwork for moving Richard’s body implies that his rejected his father’s narrative that Richard was a terrible man. It’s a fascinating read that left me wondering how Hal would make a new life and if he’d keep his past tucked away.
 
Final Rating: 4.5/5

​Grief is for People by Sloane Crosley is a book about the author trying to understand the aftermath of her friend’s suicide. It accounts Crosley’s time in the book publicist world where she met Russell, her boss. They immediately create a friendship that lasts years up until the day he hanged himself in his barn. Around the same time, Crosley’s apartment gets robbed of her grandmother’s jewelry which causes her to go on a massive search for what is lost. In the book, the two events (the theft and the suicide) become interlinked and play off each other in profound ways. Crosley also meditates on how the pandemic occurred right after Russell’s death, while also recounting the slow trajectory downward of the popularity of the publishing industry. Near the end, Crosley herself contemplates the act while cliffside in Australia, but her body tells her to stop. The accounts of moments with Russell as well as the discussions of grief felt heavy but also heartwarming.
 
Final Rating: 4.5/5

​Almost Like Being in Love by Steve Kluger is a novel told through journal entries, letters, narratives, and other found documents about the budding love of Travis and Craig. They’d met in 1978 as seniors in high school when Craig was a baseball player and Travis had pined for him. They fall for each other so by the time school ends, they find an apartment in New York City together before both departing for college on different sides of the US. Travis goes to USC to study history, while Craig goes to Harvard for law. The narrative fast-forwards to twenty years in the future where Travis is teaching how baseball and US history intertwine while failing at finding the one. Craig at this point has been dating a hardware store owner, Clayton, for 13 years while also being an attorney. Travis begins to think about their magical summer together so decides to look for Craig, eventually turning up at Craig’s mother’s practice as a gynecologist. As Travis hitchhikes, he meets a woman named AJ in St Louis who falls in love with Gordo, Travis’s straight roommate, while driving Travis to Craig. Travis finally meets up with Clayton when the couple is on the rocks because Craig is debating whether to run for Assembly or not. Travis convinces Clayton to let Craig do what he wants, though Travis is heartbroken that his true love isn’t single and is holding onto a ring Clayton gave him. All the while, Craig is representing a custody case which eventually turns in his favor. Travis meets Craig at a restaurant and while they don’t get together then, the narrative fast-forwards another six years. By that time, Craig is a congressman, Travis is a famous author, AJ and Gordo are together, and Clayton has found someone else. So in the end, Travis and Craig are back together and happy.
 
Kluger, in addition to the unique way he presents the narrative, is funny in this novel. He has a lot of zingers, fun little fights between Travis and Craig, and makes a love story in which I wanted all three of them to be together. The one little gripe I had was that it felt like Clayton’s departure was glossed over. And while it was apparent Craig and Clayton had a rocky relationship when Craig wanted to run for Assembly, I would’ve expected a little more discussion on the matter. Though, in the end Travis and Craig are what matter. A delightful read.
 
Final Rating: 4.5/5

​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