The Rovaniemi family of Michigan are the stars of Hannah Pylväinen’s “novel” We Sinner. What’s with the quotes? They might have slapped the label novel on the cover of this one but it sure as hell doesn’t read like a novel. It reads like a series of interconnected short stories, with various members of the Rovaniemi family (and once a friend of the family) taking over the narration duties. The Rovaniemi’s are a deeply religions family who practice a strict…
10:58 a.m. Mornings get off to a bumpy start when I wake up (at 9 a.m. lately, I’ve been rocking the 12:30-1 a.m. bedtime since Labor day) all itchy-nosed and swollen-eyed. Allergies are a motherfucker and I wash down my favorite generic-brand meth-grade allergy pill before my eyes are fully open. If I were smart, I’d set an alarm at like 6 a.m., take the pill, and then go back to sleep. I am, however, not smart. Before the pill,…
So, Tampa by Alissa Nutting, as far as I can tell, is the buzz book of the summer. A young, beautiful married woman takes a job as a middle school English teacher so she can prey on fourteen-year-old boys. You can see where the controversy and buzz comes from, right? Man, what a lot of hubbub about a disappointing book. Many, due to the subject matter, are likening Tampa to a female version of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. As if. Celeste…
As I type these words I’m on the very edge of a chorizo-stuffed-poblano-induced coma. This was one of those pain in the ass meals (stuffing many individual things is no fun) to make that didn’t seem like the reward would be worth the effort. However, I was wrong and it was totally worth it. My burning lips and running nose and near-coma-like state is a testament to how delicious those little pain in the asses were. I came here not…
I would like to state for the record that if I had to crawl across a desert of broken glass to read a new Norah Labiner book, I totally would. There is something about her writing that clicks inside of me in a way I can’t wholly explain. And, truth be told, there were a few times reading her latest, Let the Dark Flower Blossom, where I felt a little like I was crawling through that desert. I was broken,…
Before I tell you about Max Barry’s wonderful, enthralling new novel Lexicon, I have to tell you a story about my sister, Ericka and a reading we went to once. This is tangentially related to Max Barry, so here goes. I took her to a Mary Gaitskill reading once in the early aughts. My sister had read, and enjoyed, Veronica. Before the reading began my sister kept going on and on about how much she loved Jennifer Government. I was…
