Everything Matters! by Ron Currie

Junior is born hearing the gods, who confide in him about the past and the future, including that the world will be hit by an asteroid when he is 36 and humanity will be annihilated. A reminder to “BE DARING” and write whatever you want, Currie’s novel is...

Among the Missing by Dan Chaon

I often feel unsatisfied by short stories. They are either too shallow (really? that’s all we get about these characters?), too gimmicky, too literary (more about words than real feelings), too easy (really? she realized life’s meaning  because of the way the moon...

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

A woman takes her son to a museum to view her favorite painting. A bomb goes off. The painting and the boy make it out alive. The mother doesn’t. And so begins one of my favorite novels of all time. Still, I feel almost silly recommending it–if you...

Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon

A novel about mental illness, longing, guilt, and identity (theft, choice, fate, and confusion–you name it, it’s here), this book is my favorite kind–a suspenseful plot that doesn’t sacrifice any of the literary pleasures. It offers precise,...

“The stakes are high in every story, and not one of them ends without a moment both understated and haunting.  This is exactly the kind of prose a poet would write, and the kind of poetry out of which the best stories are spun.”
–Laura Kasischke, author of Mind of Winter

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