The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway is about an expatriate, Jake, who travels around Spain and France with his friend Lady Brett Ashley post-World War I. It follows their nights out at bars, their café attendance, bull-fighting and fishing. In the summer, Jake and a few of the other men he’s met on his travels decide to go fishing and will meet up with Brett later for a Spain fiesta. Afterward, they attend a bull-fighting celebration that lasts a week. During this time, Brett first gets close with one of Jake’s friends, and then begins to like one of the bull-fighters. The bull-fighter does fairly well during the bull-run, killing three bulls, and afterward he takes Brett along with him to Paris. Jake goes to the south of France instead, but when he gets a telegram to meet Brett, he follows. It turns out she broke it off with the bull-fighter and even though Jake likes her, they only imagine what it would be like to be together.
 
Hemingway is known for his short and exacting sentences, which makes sense to convey an emotionally detached character. In the case of Jake, he pines for Brett while she is with other men, but mustn’t be too emotional for fear that he will become too feminine. Though I found the writing style to read closer to just a journal entry, such as “I did this, and then I did that”. Sure, it does have an effect but not one that I particularly enjoyed. At its heart, this story is about a man being friend-zoned—though friend-zoned in the twentieth century. So I can see why it’s a popular novel, but for a certain type of disaffected man. It wasn’t really the novel for me, but not terrible either.
 
Final Rating: 3.5/5

​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

​Say Nephew by Steven Pfau is a collection of essays revolving around a nephew’s understanding of his gay uncle, Bruce, as he grows up learning he himself is gay. The essays navigate queerness and mentorship through discussions on topics such as cruising, hosting (both parties and hook-up), the kink scene, and a leather bar, among other things. The uncle-nephew relationship is also looked at in a critical lens with references to a controversial book titled The Story of Harold to the nephew of Gertrude Stein who posed for Picasso. And Pfau also discusses the more taboo side of that relationship which parallels that of a daddy/boy kink some queer men act out. Though, the essays provide an understanding of a man who has found a mentor in his alcoholic, lively, and queer uncle when he was growing up and wandering Bruce’s house that had pictures of revealing men to a moment right before he leaves for college. This moment in particular, a moment on a couch where Bruce seems to be pining for his real-life nephew when he was quite drunk, may be what enhances, or puts more nuance to, the relationship. As the speaker notes, “Whenever I could see you in the future, I could be more afraid of you, now that I know what you’re capable of…” Though, there certainly are lighter moments such as a man stealing someone else’s pee at a bathroom bar trough and pouring it over himself to a couple hosting him at a cabin while they have their way with him, or finding a stray dog and raising it. A decent read.
 
3.5/5

​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

​The Best American Short Stories 1994 is an anthology of short stories published the year prior and selected by Tobias Wolff. There are some real bangers in this collection, such as ‘Proper Library’ by Carolyn Ferrell, ‘In the Gloaming’ by Alice Elliot Dark, ‘Pipa’s Story’ by Lan Samantha Chang, and ‘Landscape and Dream’ by Nancy Krusoe. Specifically, ‘In the Gloaming’ is about a handicapped son and his mother caring for him as he slowly deteriorates from an unmentioned disease. Though the deterioration, as opposed to other declines caused by disease, is portrayed in a dignified light, one which treats the character, Laird, as curious, wanting to know about his mother’s life before he perishes. Another story I wanted to highlight was ‘Proper Library’ which follows a boy from a rough part of New York, caring for friend’s babies, and pining for another boy. It is a sad rendition of what type of masculinity thrives and what dies when the going gets rough. Though, I am on the fence with its voice, a distinct part of the story, in part because if it crosses a line, it becomes a stereotype of Black New York youth. There was also one story that had such a strange, confusing, and frankly very controversial scene in ‘Things Left Undone’ by Christopher Tilghman that I would feel very uncomfortable describing it. I don’t know if me feeling unsettled is what the story is trying to portray, but it verges on being edgy for the sake of being edgy. Though, for all the anthology’s faults, it’s a decent read.
 
Final Rating: 3.5/5

​The Grass Harp and A Tree of Night by Truman Capote is a collection of short stories and one novella, The Grass Harp, that focuses on families and children in the south and sometimes New York City. The Grass Harp follows a teenager as he is brought to his aunts’, Dolly and Verena’s, place with his father passing away quite soon after the boy, Collin, is dropped off. Verena is the industrious aunt who has businesses everywhere in the small southern town, and as such she’s quite demanding and strict with Collin and Dolly. As for Dolly, it becomes clear through her interests (e.g. painting a room fully pink, boiling medicine in a tub, etc.) and demeanor, she is disabled. However, Collin, Dolly, and their help, Catherine Cook, make a fine group that helps cook and sell the medicine. One day, Verena returns home with a businessman who wants to get the recipe for Dolly’s cure and make labels for the bottles. She doesn’t like this, and to get away from the businessman, Dolly, Collin, and Catherine all runaway to a treehouse in a field. The first day, they nearly get shot out of their hiding spot because of a boy, Riley, who was looking to hunt squirrels. He leaves them and then a troop of the Sheriff, Judge, and a few other people come to collect them from the treehouse after hearing word from Riley where they were. The Judge joins the group, while the rest are shoed off. When the sheriff and his buddies return, they come with a vengeance trying get the group to return to Verena—though while everyone escapes, they catch Catherine, the only Black person in their group. During their time in the treehouse, they meet a woman who has fifteen children looking for food and to tell Dolly that she hadn’t bad-mouthed her. All while this is going on, back with Verena, the businessman ran off with twelve-thousand dollars of her cash. While in the tree, the Judge and Dolly get married right before the sheriff returns a final time. Though when one of his buddies is nearly choked, he shoots his rifle and the bullet hits Riley in the leg. This just about ends their adventure with Verena taking them back in, but things between the sisters had changed.
 
The other stories in the collection follows: a woman who gets paid for telling a mysterious man about her dreams, a little girl that tries for a talent show while everyone is mesmerized by her but she’s swindled out of her stardom, a boy who tries extra hard in counting the money in a jar put up for guessing, a mysterious girl that shows up at a woman’s house and won’t leave, and a niece returning from attending her uncle’s funeral sitting next to a deaf man and drunk wife. All the stories had an insane amount of charm and craft, but I particularly liked, ‘My Side of the Matter’, which is a man’s recounting of how he nearly got stabbed by one of his wife’s friends. The voice, snappiness, and humor were really striking (albeit misogynistic).
 
As with all of Capote’s other works that I’ve read, this collection entranced me. The language, which is one of its most striking elements rolls you along with this confident and propulsive pace. Capote, it seems, had an internal rhythm of language that makes descriptions of the landscape or of people magical. The dialogue and quips were so memorable as well, particularly in ‘My Side of the Matter’. It is also surprising that ‘The Grass Harp’ was made into a musical that, while unfortunate that it flopped, still has its soundtrack online. There so much to say about Capote’s brilliance, but I’ll just leave it at this: read this book!
 
Final Rating: 5/5

​AGNI Issue 101 is a collection of essays, fiction, poetry, and art mainly centered around conflict and the pain of war. There are pieces on Gaza and most notably the art feature of the issue is art done by a Palestinian artist. And the pieces I particularly liked were ‘Pandora Addresses the Court’ by Vanessa Stauffer, ‘Catching My Breath, I Nearly Forget the View’ by Jim Whiteside, ‘What I Can’t Say’ by Brandi Bird, and ‘Curly’ by Ahmed Douma. Though the piece that has stuck with me the most is ‘Florence, now a bird’ by Silja Liv Kelleris which is about a girl who begins growing wings. The government then takes her as a young girl and cages her up in the center of the town as a tourist attraction. After many years, they sew up her mouth and put a beak on her mouth. After a while, the government takes her out of the cage and makes her “fly” from the top of a building, which is really her plummeting to her death. Overall, a decent issue.
 
Final Rating: 3.5/5

​Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency by Chen Chen is a poetry collection centering around queerness, love and family tension during and after Covid. The poems follow a speaker as he settles into his life with his partner, Jeff, while navigating teaching, his mother’s wariness and trepidation about his sexuality, all against the backdrop of the world falling apart. There are poems, such as, ‘One Year Later: A Letter’, which recognize the victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting, or of Covid being labeled the “Kung Flu” in ‘Winter [It’s April.]’. Though, my favorites of the collection were ‘Winter [Big smell]’, ‘Elegy While Listening to a Song I can’t Help But Start to Move to’, and ‘I Invite My Parents to a Dinner Party’. The poems at times are funny—one referencing poop—while other times longing for the speaker’s mother to be okay with his partner, all while the world felt completely unsettled. Really enjoyed the read (and the cover is really cute too).
 
Final Rating: 4/5

​Bestiary by Donika Kelly is a collection of love poems, sometimes about the author sometimes about her beloved, though always centered around mythology and creatures. Trauma from the father surfaces in poems such as in ‘How to be alone’, the author says, “The gusset of your panties / soaked with your father’s semen. Why / you no longer wear panties.” A sharply horrifying image, one that becomes really the only specifics of the father’s abuse that is referred to later on in the collection. Though, above and beyond, the collection has a bountiful of love directed at the speaker’s lover, such as in ‘Love Poem: Centaur’ which says, “I would make a burnishing / of you, by which I mean a field in flower, / by which I mean, a breaching—…Love, / I pound the earth for you. I pound the earth.” Other poems that drew my attention were ‘Tender’, ‘Little Box’, and ‘Love Letter’.
 
Final Rating: 4/5

​A Kind of Madness by Uche Okonkwo is a collection of stories featuring women in Nigeria who are driven to extremes by the people around them. The whole collection was astounding, and almost every single story was amazing. The first story, ‘Nwunye Belgium’, is about a woman whose mother is in search of a husband for her and when she isn’t able to find a good suitor, her friend suggests her son, a doctor working in Belgium, to marry. And even though she is seeing another man, her mother convinces her to stop seeing him because he isn’t wealthy. Because this is a small town, it becomes talk that she will be marrying a very wealthy doctor and will be taken out of Nigeria into Belgium. However, as time unravels, the status of the friend’s son is shown to be a lie. That while at one point her son did pursue work in Belgium, she actually doesn’t have contact with her son anymore. That the friend made up her son being a bachelor so that she could have a higher status in the town. And now, the woman is marred and ridiculed because she’d stopped seeing her actual love in return for a fake suitor. Another story, ‘Animals’, is about a boy Nedu and his family that bought a chicken to slaughter for dinner. But the mother is unable to kill it, even though she’s done all the work in the family. Nedu becomes so attached to the chicken that they give it a name via a ceremony that the father is encouraging while the mother looks down on it. In fact, she realizes that without her, the family would be dysfunctional and is frustrated that the one thing that a ‘man’ is supposed to do (i.e. kill the chicken) is made to be her job. The father, after a while prepares himself to kill the chicken, and when Nedu pleads them not to, they see that the chicken has been cut from its leash and runs away from them. The sister films the whole thing as the family runs around the town to get the chicken. Finally, when the family catches the chicken, the father kills it and Nedu becomes so distraught that he won’t eat dinner. Eventually he does, but he eats around the cooked chicken parts. A third story to highlight is ‘Eden’ in which a brother and sister rummage through their father’s collection of tapes and find his pornography. They watch together both mesmerized and terrified of the consequences. So much so that one day when the power goes out and they can’t pull the tape from the VCR, they are on edge until their father finds out what they’d been watching. From this, he freaks out and beats the son who admits to watching it, and covers for the sister. After some time, the brother gets into more trouble, and to show that she can be just as strong as him, she admits to her father that she also watched the tape. Her father beats her as well.
 
I’ve dogeared basically every story in Okonkwo’s collection because they’re truly so astounding in the depth and propulsion that they’re all hits. These feel like quintessential stories of religion, mental illness, family pain and drama. And each story opens up a world that felt so specific and full of emotion that I can only be left in awe. An unrivaled read.
 
Final Rating: 5/5