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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
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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 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 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 The Florida Review 47.2 features a collection of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction of which I enjoyed a few. I particularly liked ‘Antidote’ by Ben Kline, ‘Indulgences’ by Garrett Biggs, ‘Elegy with Snake Twisting my Blistered Tongue’ by Alejandro Lucero, ‘Suspended in Flight’ by Diane Gottlieb, ‘OWLS’ by Kathryn Campo Bowen, and ‘A Chest of Drawers’ by Jason Brown. I liked the flow of ‘OWLS’ in the way that the two men try to find their friend, Vanessa, after a night drinking where she wanted to have sex with one of the men. All the characters are studying law, with the speaker planning to write a novel but it never comes to fruition. In the end, they find Vanessa, as she is not lost, and is annoyed they went looking for her. I found this collection to be a generally solid read.
Final Rating: 3.5/5 Story Winter 1993 is a collection of short stories. Many of the story were decent, either dealing with grief, adultery, or loss of a child. Though, I particularly liked ‘The First Snow’ by Daniel Lyons, which is about a father whose family finds out he’s gay after cops catch him in the park, and his son, who is a high school senior, tries to understand and deal with the revelation of his father. The father, it seems then “over corrects” for him being gay by taking his son out shooting birds. Other stories I found interesting were ‘God’s Door’ by Sally Savic, and ‘Jacinta’ by Charles D’Ambrosio.
Final Rating: 3.5/5 The Greensboro Review Spring 2024 contains a few stories and poems that I found interesting. First was the story, ‘Trailer Park Gothic’ by Josh Bell, then ‘Mantis’ by Daniel S.C. Sutter, and finally the story, ‘Interiors’ by Leah Yacknin-Dawson. They all had intriguing and memorable characters and I particularly liked the sibling relationship in ‘Interiors’. I also enjoyed the poem ‘February: A Dictionary’ by Weijia Par with the lines “I know every inch of my body/is a danger to no one; I like history; my great-grandpa/survived all the wars for me.” A fine issue.
Final Rating: 3.5/5 South Dakota Review 58.1 is a collection of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. Out of the pieces, I enjoyed ‘Nepenthes Northiana’ by Virgil Suárez, ‘When it Rains’ by Elizabeth Wilson, ‘Never Break Two Laws at Once’ by Adam Straus, and ‘Mascot Worship’ by William Musgrove. Particularly the story by Adam Straus was interesting in the way it handled desertion, anxiety, and dislike toward the military.
Final Rating: 3.5/5 Story Spring 1991 is a collection of short stories which I found to be intriguing and heartbreaking. I particularly liked ‘Floor Show’ by Julia Alverez, ‘Cash Machine’ by Madison Smartt Bell, ‘It’s Come to This’ by Annick Smith, ‘Porpoises and Romance’ by Lewis Nordan, and ‘’The Control Group’ by Antonya Nelson. ‘Floor Show’ is about an immigrant family trying to impress a wealthy family at a Mexican restaurant while one of the daughters sees the wealthy wife kiss her dad. ‘Cash Machine’ is about a pair of men trying to rob a young couple of money in New York. ‘It’s Come to This’ is about a widow who lost her husband while living in Montana, and trying to deal with the grief by befriending a neighbor. And ‘Porpoises and Romance’ is about a boy who questions his sexuality while his parents celebrate a second honeymoon at a beach. This collection was a powerful read.
Final Rating: 4/5 The Kenyon Review Summer 2023 is a collection of poetry, short stories, and essays focusing on Women’s Health and ecopoetics. I was particularly drawn to the essay, ‘Shelter in Place’, by Sydney Tammarine, the essay, ‘How to Tell a True Love Story’, by Leslie Jill Patterson, the story, ‘Robber’s Lake’, by Emma Binder, the story, ‘Burnings’, by Kabi Hartman, and the poem, ‘Comfort Food’, by Terrance Hayes. In ‘Robber’s Lake’, a boy fashions himself a diving rig to go to the bottom of a lake and bring back his mother’s painting which he thinks will bring her out of her depression. He enlists the help of an older gay man and as the boy searches, his contraption fills with water and the man has to jump in to save him. This collection was strong in its discussion of the environment and how women are vital for a healthy world.
Final Rating: 4/5 |
AuthorMaxwell Suzuki is a writer, poet, and photographer based in Los Angeles. Archives
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