​The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe is a novel about an entomologist who goes to the desert in search of a beetle. However, when he arrives to the desert, and there are no insects in sight, he eventually comes upon a village that has burrowed holes into the sand where their homes sit. The man asks for a place to stay, and is brought down into one of the holes, where a woman about his age lives. Though, while the man intends to leave the following day, the woman and the village intend to keep him far longer. Every night, the woman digs up the sand that has settled on the ground, where it is pulled up by other villagers, so that they won’t be buried. It’s a constant and unrelenting task that consumes the woman’s time. The man, having realized he’s stuck in the hole with the woman, tries to escape. First by trying to climb the steep walls, then by trying to dig out the sand so that it slopes more easily. All of his attempts fail, and gets him injured, where the woman cares for him for a few days. Thus, their life follows this routine, with the man trying to bide his time for an opening. Then, about two months in, he ties up the woman and tries to use her as his prisoner, pleading with the other villagers taking up the sand that she will die if he isn’t let out. Though, they don’t head his word. His final attempt at escape comes when he drugs the woman with sake and medicine, tying anything he can find into a rope where the ladders are anchored. When he’s successful in hooking his grappling, the man flees from the hole to wait on the outskirts of the village where he can get to the highway. But as he walks, he realizes he’s hit the center of the village, where he runs and gets caught in quicksand. The villagers help him from the quicksand, but throw him back in the hole with the woman. Then, their life returns to what it had been: digging the sand, in addition to falling in love. The thought of escape eventually falls away, and when the woman gets pregnant and is taken to the hospital while the villagers left the ladder in the hole, the man doesn’t leave.
 
Abe is a master at crafting stories that have elements of strangeness in them. The village that has burrowed their homes into the sand, and now have an endless task before them of digging the sand out, is such an odd but interesting setting. Early on, the man thinks of ways that would stop them from having to dig, but it soon becomes apparent that their perpetual lives are ones the village is not interesting in changing. To me, it can read as an allegory in which tradition, no matter how illogical, becomes the facet for which societies create and sustain meaning. And with the man’s continual attempts to escape, the ending becomes a surprise when he doesn’t immediately book it. In a way, he has found comfort in the woman, the sand, such that he’s lulled into the routine. I also was fully immersed into the minutia of the man’s life, of how the sand must be delt with, how it settles everywhere, and his dwindling hope of ever truly escaping. Abe sets us up in the beginning with the knowledge that the man will have been missing for seven years (and presumably longer), which sets the tone for all the man’s attempts. We know that he doesn’t return for at least seven years, while the story follows the first few months of his life in the hole. Thus, signaling to the reader that none of the man’s attempts were ever successful even as they’re read in the moment. It was a truly weird, but fun read.
 
Final Rating: 5/5

​Tenth of December by George Saunders is a collection of stories which broach science fiction. One of the more famous stories, ‘Escape from Spiderhead’, is about a group of convicts that are used as lab rats to test chemical concoctions that create intense love out of thin air, makes someone experience the worst feelings ever, and notice the beauty in mundane things. It was one of the better stories, as Saunders’s writing style can at times lead with its voice. Though, other stories I liked were, ‘Victory Lap’, about a kid who sees a man try to abduct his neighbor so throws a geode at the man’s head and eventually kills him, while the title story, ‘Tenth of December’, is about a kid who sees a man walking in ten-degree weather so tries to save him by bringing a coat across a partially frozen pond. The kid falls in, and while the man wanted to die in the cold, he saves the kid, and eventually the kid saves him. For most of the stories however, I don’t think I was the audience as the references and language tipped almost too much into sci-fi territory. Though, the few I mentioned, I did like.
 
Final Rating: 3.5/5

​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

​The Wickedest by Caleb Femi is a collection of poems which follows the happenings of a house party in south London in one night. I particularly liked the poems ‘Pass the Aux’, ‘Fredrick Stick Talks in Another Dimension’, ‘myth says South London boys don’t dance’, and ‘Brenda gives a pep talk to Abu’. The poems exude an energy of the house party, throwing away the idea of responsibility, and letting loose. Though, near the end, there’s a solemnness to the collection where Femi writes, “The stubborn weight of our giggling skulls/painted in your years./Remember us well.” A firecracker of a collection.
 
Final Rating: 4/5

​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

Tin House Issue 60 is a collection of poetry, fiction, essays, reviews, and interviews. Most notably, they interviewed Karl Ove Knausgaard on his six-book series autobiography. I also particularly enjoyed the fiction in this issue, ‘About My Aunt’ by Joan Silber, ‘When We Realize We Are Broke’ by Manuel Gonzales, ‘Before the Bombing’ by Jonathan Lee, and ‘Primal Scenes’ by Kenneth Calhoun. Though, I think the story that was the most haunting, dark, but needed was Adam Johnson’s ‘Dark Meadow’. I liked this issue, and found myself enraptured by the interview with Karl Ove Knausgaard.
 
Final Rating: 4/5
 

​Death Valley by Melissa Broder is a novel in which a writer, needing to find inspiration for her novel, goes to a Best Western in the Los Angeles desert while her father is on life support and her husband is dealing with a chronic disease. While at the hotel, she Facetimes her father to check in how he’s doing after a car crash, as well as talking to her husband. She’s told by the receptionist at the Best Western there’s a trail to hike, so she goes on that trail only to find a massive cactus with a wound along its length. She pushes her hand into it, and finds out she can go inside. While inside, it soon dawns on her that there’s someone else in the cactus: her father as a young boy making a sandcastle. She returns the following day to the cactus where now her father is a teen smoking a cigarette while her husband is a wheezing small child. On the third day, when she tells the receptionist she’s returning to LA, she doesn’t find the cactus. So she continues down the trail trying to find it, when she soon realizes she’s gotten lost. She tries to take different branching paths, then hikes up to the summit of a mountain to look out. But as she climbs, she slips and injures her leg and arm. She has to then find her way back by crawling. Though, the night is settling in so she makes a fire and sleeps. The next day, she tries to tempt a few rabbits to show her where nonpoisonous food is. Eventually, she finds a group of rabbits huddled around a cactus. She opens the cactus up and eats it, only to find out that it gives her diarrhea. She’s about to give in when a massive bird flies down, picking her up, and taking her to the top of the mountain. She believes this is her father in bird form, who she thinks has passed away. Then she crawls down, knowing it’s the right path when she arrives to the cactus. She gets inside and soon her father is culling her with a bottle of Dr. Pepper, then is replaced with a corpse of her father that she must bury. But when she digs, her tears create a river inside the cactus, and she sees her husband wading in. After these visions, she crawls out of the cactus, and can hear the receptionist searching for her. Then when she is rescued, we learn that her father isn’t dead and her love for her husband has deepened.
 
This novel tackles heavy topics such as death and chronic illness in a slightly humorous and meaningful tone. The narrator talks with rocks, rabbits, birds, flowers, really anything which puts into perspective her situation while she is close to death. It felt really fast paced and the voice was what carried it along. A weird, funny, and surreal read!
 
Final Rating: 4/5

​The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde is a novel about a young man whose painted portrait displays the age and sin of Dorian, while he stays as youthful as ever. The painter, Basil Hallward, sets his eyes upon Dorian at a party and finds the soul of his art in him. So he decides to paint Dorian. The painter’s friend, Lord Henry, accompanies the both of them during a session, essentially telling Dorian that he is young and that he needs to experience pleasure rather than care about anything else. Once the portrait is done, it’s so beautiful, Dorian cries and when Basil says he can destroy it, Dorian prays that he stay as young and pretty as what the portrait captured. Thus, Dorian takes the portrait home and displays it while he goes about his life. Upon Lord Henry’s suggestion of experiencing pleasures, Dorian attends a play where the actress, Sybil Vane, stars. Dorian falls in love with her, in large part to the talent of her acting. Every night he goes to her afterward, and after a few weeks the two are engaged to marry. Lord Henry is skeptical of Sybil because he believes marriage is not what it’s cracked up to be. Dorian tells Lord Henry and Basil that if they were to see her plays, they’d understand why he wants to marry her. So all three attend a show where Sybil plays Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, but she does so terribly, Basil, Lord Henry, and half of the audience leave. By the end of the show, Dorian is so disgusted and has fallen out of love with Sybil that he tells her as much after. She’s heartbroken when he leaves. Later that night, Sybil kills herself over love. Back at his home, Dorian gazes at the portrait and notices the mouth has turned slightly grotesque. The next day when Dorian hears the news from Lord Henry, he was just about to go back on his word with a letter to marry Sybil. Dorian then finds himself unharmed by the whole ordeal and decides that he can do whatever he wants. For eighteen years, Dorian buys all the things he desires, goes to (I assume) brothels, drug dens, and makes other people’s lives spiral. All the while, the portrait becomes absolutely horrid. Then, Basil confronts Dorian about the rumors outside of his place. Dorian invites him inside and as they discuss, Dorian says that if Basil wanted to see if he truly was what everyone said he was, he’d go upstairs. In the room Dorian has stored the painting, Basil sees it has taken on all of Dorian’s age and bad deeds. As Basil is crying over what Dorian has become, Dorian sees a knife on the desk and slits Basil’s throat. The next day he has his old chemistry friend dispose of the body by blackmailing him. A time passes where he starts to get cravings for opium, so gets a ride an hour away late at night where he goes to a den. He sees the man he’s ruined, and doesn’t want his friend to know he smokes anymore. So he goes down to a wharf where he knows someone else is selling opium. However, Sybil’s younger brother approaches him and threatens he will kill Dorian because he had killed his sister. Though, Dorian says that because it was eighteen years ago, how would it have been possible when he still looked so young. Dorian escapes before Sybil’s brother realizes it was actually him. Later on, when Dorian attends a shooting party, the man he’s with inexplicably shoots Sybil’s brother, the man Dorian had greatly worried about. In the end, Dorian decides to destroy the painting because it has only brought him misdeeds and evil. As he does so, the painting is transformed back into the youthful beautiful man he once was, while the dead Dorian is an old wretched heap.
 
Wilde really made this story sing with the tension of murder, suicide, and Dorians actions. Though, I couldn’t help to read the novel with a queer lens when Dorian is first discussed. “…but it is what Dorian Gray has been to me. The mere visible presence of this lad…The harmony of soul and body!...if you only knew what Dorian Gray is to me!” This is when Basil is talking about why he painted Dorian, and the reader is led to believe that it was purely because Basil saw the distillation of art in Dorian. Though, over and over again, Basil is desperate to paint Dorian, lending a feeling of love that goes far beyond painting. The question of why Dorian hasn’t married, or frankly, has a woman in his life after eighteen years is quite telling, when Lord Henry is still by his side. It also felt like there was a hint to this when Dorian blackmails the chemist alluding to a secret he will reveal if the chemist doesn’t dispose of Basil’s body. The question is, what was in the letter Dorian intended to send if the chemist didn’t do what he was told? At the time, being queer was very likely for someone to be kicked out of high society. So because of the mystery within the letter, it lends itself to this type of reading. This may also explain why Lord Henry feels apathetic towards marriage and goes to Dorian after his divorce.
 
There was a lot to love in this novel, and I felt totally immersed in the extravagant and dark life of Dorian Gray. Which is funny because in the edition that I have, there’s an introduction by Allan Donaldson who seems to be dismissive of the novel. He says, “The Picture of Dorian Gray is not a great novel, and its failings are often the failings of an amateur uncertain of the imaginative atmosphere which his characters must inhabit of they are to remain credible…Nevertheless, the novel survives while other, abstractly better, novels of the period have been forgotten.” I think it just confuses me to have such a lukewarm introduction for the book someone had ostensibly bought. It leaves me wondering why have Allan Donaldson give an introduction in the first place? Regardless of the critique, I really enjoyed Wilde’s scenes, the way he can zoom out eighteen years, the descriptions of people, and the way Dorian is tainted by Lord Henry’s philosophy.
 
Final Rating: 5/5

A Christmas Memory, One Christmas, & The Thanksgiving Visitor by Truman Capote is a collection of three stories, two of which are autobiographical. ‘A Christmas Memory’ is about a young boy and his sixty-year-old friend, Sook, who decide to make fruitcakes to send out to friends and family. Then on Christmas, they give each other kites that they had made. ‘One Christmas’ features the same speaker going to his father’s house in New Orleans for Christmas. The boy doesn’t want to go and when he arrives, learns that Santa isn’t real upon seeing his father set out the presents. He then begs his father for a plane he saw earlier in his visit, so his completely drunk father buys the expensive gift and sends the boy off to return to Alabama. The final story, ‘The Thanksgiving Visitor’ is about the same boy being bullied by another boy, Odd Henderson, and when he tells Sook, she invites Odd Henderson to their Thanksgiving dinner. When Odd arrives and the speaker sees him take Sook’s brooch, he accuses Odd of stealing. Though, his plan goes awry and Sook covers for Odd. The boy, angered by what Sook had said, runs off to their barn, where she eventually joins and comforts him.
 
Capote captures the childlike feelings of nostalgia and conflict in this collection. Each story is rooted in time and place and has this feeling of bittersweetness. There’s love exuding in the relationship between the boy and Sook, fractured at times, but always repaired. It’s succinct, and understands the tenderness of childhood.
 
Final Rating: 5/5