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

​The Iowa Review Winter 2023/24 is a collection of poetry, essays, and short stories. This issue had some really strong short stories that I particularly liked. The first was ‘Invisibilia’ by Tom Howard which features a family on the brink of divorce while all the family members either start to become invisible or shrink. I was also a big fan of ‘Family Video’ by Gracie Newman where two brothers take their grandmother’s old VHS tapes to a video rental store, fighting and remembering the love and abuse of their grandmother. There was ‘Human Resources’ by Brynne Jones which is about a woman working a corporate job when a strange girl appears at her door and as the story goes on, the girl becomes younger until she’s just an egg. And finally, I really enjoyed ‘Rifleman’ by Alex Burchfield about a Home Depot manager who befriends one of his workers, Andromeda/Andy, before a shoplifter comes into the store with a gun. For me, the stories in this issue really packed a punch, treading sometimes into the surreal.
 
Final Rating: 4/5

​Fire Exit by Morgan Talty is a novel about a man, Charles, who lives across the river from the Penobscot reservation and tries to reconnect with his daughter, Elizabeth, who doesn’t know he’s her father. Though, because he’s not native, Elizabeth’s mother, Mary, wanted to disguise the fact of Elizabeth’s origin so she could fully embrace her Penobscot identity. The novel follows Charles as he watches Mary and Elizabeth across the river, as he cares for his mother whose memory is slowly fading, and makes friends with Bobby, a man whose drunkenness over takes him. Though when Charles takes his mother to get checked for her twisted ankle, he tells the doctor that she has depression, so is recommended Electroconvulsive Therapy. This is where we meet Elizabeth in her current state who also is getting treated, but only Mary and Charles know her true origins. Then, when Mary finds out Charles plans to tell Elizabeth he’s her father, Mary warns it would be a terrible, world-shattering idea for Elizabeth. Then, during a massive snow storm, Charles decides to leave his mother in search for a missing girl he believes to be Elizabeth. This proves fatal because while Charles finds Elizabeth had taken his gun and sat burning in Charles’s step-father’s home where he rescues her, Charles’s mother is forgotten. Then when Charles recovers from the burns and returns to his mother who has soiled her sheets, he takes care of her before leaving to talk to Elizabeth. At the hospital, Charles tells Elizabeth the truth about him, while forgetting his own mother at home. When he returns the next day, he finds his mother dead in the wet sheets that he’d washed for her. At the funeral, Mary and Elizabeth are there to pay their condolences and provide a possible future for Charles to be in Elizabeth’s life. The novel weaves in other plots about Charles’s childhood friend, Gizos, who was the son of the tribe leader and beaten by his father because he was gay. Though, it was blamed on Charles, which further distanced him from the reservation. Gizos then comes back when his father dies, showing Charles his life as a married man with a son. We also get to see Charles and Mary’s past as kids, the first and only time Charles meets Elizabeth, and how Charles’s step-father’s death could be attributed to him.
 
Talty is a master at crafting narratives that weave in and out of each other, telling stories that impact everything else. I felt the chapter with Gizos being beaten and his father blaming Charles was so raw with the last moment of Gizos shooting into the sky to be so poignant. It’s a novel about family, what secrets we hold to keep our families safe, fatherhood, friendship, and love. A truly remarkable read.
 
Final Rating: 5/5

​Granta Issue 67 is a collection of essays and stories centered around, ‘Women and Children First’ (i.e. the idea that they are the first people to be saved during tragedies). The issue opens with a discussion on the movie Titanic and the truth behind whether the band actually played as the ship sank and what song were they playing. Another essay documents the experience of being bombed for a year in Yugoslavia. Another featured essay from Edward Said describes his upbringing as a Palestinian and the norms and cultures his parents surround him in. There’s an essay about Iraq, a photo collection of Mennonites in Canada, and an essay on the experience of a journalist witnessing the inhumane conditions and slaughtering of refugees in Kibeho, Rwanda as the UN officers watched on. The story that I particularly enjoyed was, ‘Telling Him’, by Edmund White in which a gay American in France has a relationship with a married Frenchman. All the while, the American knows he is HIV positive and is worried that when he tells the Frenchman, they will fight or become violent. This issue of Granta felt especially prescient in its discussions of war, refugees, and Palestine even though it was published in 1999.
 
Final Rating: 4/5

​We the Animals by Justin Torres is a novel about three brothers who live with an abusive father. The youngest, and the narrator, describes moments where they play around with their mother at the kitchen when they were young, and watch as their father digs a hole and they all go inside it, in addition to other moments. One day, the mother decides to pack up everything and the boys to try and flee the father, but as they hang around the park, the mother can’t bring herself to completely leave so they return home. We get moments of the boys throwing rocks at a neighbor’s house, and the neighbor’s son invites them into his basement where they watch gay porn. Another moment where the father takes the youngest to Niagara Falls, dangles him over the edge, and when they arrive at a museum, the father notes how pretty his son is. All of it comes to a head when the boys are older and the youngest hangs around a bus station restroom hoping to have sex with men. Eventually, as a bus driver asks him where he’s going, he is brought onto the bus where the man touches him. When the youngest arrives home however, his family has found his journal which he’s written down his fantasies. This causes his parents to take him to get institutionalized. At the end, right before they’re about to make him leave their home, his father bathes him while his mother watches, and his brothers sit outside in their truck.
 
Torres writes so succinctly and powerfully that the characters feel so real in their rendition. We get to see the collective feeling of the brothers in the beginning due to the abusiveness of their father, which showcases the brothers splintering in the end of the novel. Its lyrical quality reminds me of Ocean Vuong’s writing which felt completely heartbreaking but also true to the character’s experiences. I particularly felt that the chapter ‘Us Proper’ worked so well with the voice that Torres cultivates. The brothers are brash and violent which is a product of how they were treated by their father. I remember hearing on a Tin House podcast that because he was on a bus, he had to write one of the chapters in his head and memorize it. The novel is short, but every word felt so intentional. I think it’ll be one of those novels I’ll be returning to over and over again.
 
Final Rating: 5/5

​How We Named the Stars by Andrés N. Ordorcia is a novel about a man, Daniel, who comes to terms with his sexuality upon meeting his college roommate in Ithaca, Sam. Sam is a soccer player who doesn’t fit the ordinary understanding of being queer. However, as Daniel and Sam get to know each other, there are signs that Daniel picks up on: being spooned during a camping trip, kisses, stares, and touches that last a little too long for mere friendship. As their freshman year progresses, they run with each other and the tension of Daniel’s love pulls them together. All of Daniel’s friends encourage him to be more forthright with Sam, where they go to a queer party, and eventually Sam invites Daniel out to a party with all the soccer players after he wins their college game. Their will-they-won’t-they continues on until Daniel explains to Sam his feelings for him. Then, they have sex in the last few weeks of the year. However, Sam hasn’t quite understood his sexuality and so near the end of the year, he pulls farther away from Daniel, where he plans to live in a frat house instead of with Daniel. During summer break, Daniel goes to Mexico to bring his grandfather back to America when he receives an email from Sam that he’s not ready to be out and that they should stop seeing each other. This breaks Daniel while he tries to keep up appearances for his grandfather and family in Mexico. At his welcome party, Daniel meets the wealthy caterer, Diego, who falls quickly for him. Diego invites Daniel out that night where Daniel tries to process his feelings for Sam while also trying to handle Diego. Diego and Daniel then go on a trip where they make love and their relationship blossoms, though Daniel’s true feelings lie with Sam. Then, Daniel gets a call from Sam’s mother saying that Sam died in a drunken car accident without a seatbelt. Daniel is so heartbroken that he retracts himself from his family, drinking and sleeping and trying to figure out how he’d be able to live. In an attempt to get him out of his shell, his grandfather talks to him about his uncle, Daniel, who was also gay and died after accidently being shot by his best friend. Diego then reaches out to invite Daniel out, where Diego’s true intentions are revealed where he only wants Daniel and not for Daniel to process his loss. Daniel ditches Diego after they fight where he eventually returns to his grandfather’s house. It takes Daniel an understanding and an opening up to his grandfather for him to start the process of moving on. When Daniel is able to start thinking about the next year, he goes through his emails where he finds Sam’s final email saying he loved him and that it was stupid of him to write the email before. And so, to reconnect with his uncle’s best friend and provide closure to his uncle’s death, Daniel and his grandfather go to his uncle’s best friend. They talk and go to his uncle’s gravesite where all three men try to process life, death, love, and loss.
 
 Ordorcia frames the novel with Daniel writing to Sam after returning for his sophomore year. Essentially he is in the middle of processing his loss by talking to his dead lover, which provides a beautiful and reflective understanding of Daniel and Sam’s relationship. At the beginning of each chapter, there’s also a diary entry we later learn is from Daniel’s uncle describing his feelings for other men and his desire for activism during the AIDs crisis. It’s a truly intense story of first love, how to process death, and a family’s desire to reconnect.
 
Final Rating: 5/5

​New Ohio Review Issue 34 is a collection of poetry, short stories, essays and reviews. I particularly enjoyed ‘visiting the Natural History Museum with my 97-Year-Old Dad’ by Michael Mark, ‘The Hair Cutting’ by Ockert Greeff, ‘In Our Nature’ by Sunni Brown Wilkinson, ‘My Body is a Cemetery’ by Eliza Sullivan, ‘Pantoum’ by Maria Martin, and ‘Kate Sessions Park’ by Bruce McKay. In ‘Kate Sessions Park’, McKay describes a girl, Fatima, who helps an intellectually disabled girl, Cici. When Fatima and the speaker bring Cici to a junior lifeguarding event, Cici pees herself, which causes Fatima to drive her to a beach 90 miles away, effectively getting her fired from helping Cici. It’s a raw story that works with the speaker’s sense of observations and intuitions.
 
Final Rating; 3.5/5