As Noah York says of his mother: “Of course I love her, but that’s beside the point.” She is the “most complicated person” he knows, “running the gamut from holy woman to gargoyle, depending on the day.” In The Language of Love and Loss (Kensington Books), it has been eight months since 37-year-old Noah — […]
Local book reviews
Posted inBook Reviews
Book Review: ‘Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State’ by Kerry Howley
Kerry Howley, you had me the title. Maybe your brain hasn’t been colonized but internet worms for the better part of three decades, but I for one recognized immediately the reference to a viral video from 2014 in which a middle-aged white woman presents a practiced two-minute spiel, including visual aids, breaking down all the […]
Posted inBook Reviews
Book Review: ‘The Behavior of Words’ by Efe Duyan, transl. Aron Aji
In the translator’s note, Aron Aji — director of MFA in Literary Translation at the University of Iowa — gives some insights on his methodology and experience as both a reader and translator of Efe Duyan’s The Behavior of Words (White Pine Press, 2023). “Given the infamous incommensurability of English and Turkish grammars, the process […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Book Reviews: ‘hush hush hush’ by Audra Kerr Brown
In hush hush hush (Small Harbor Publishing), Audra Kerr Brown’s writing turns the mundane to horror. This chapbook is a collection of Brown’s flash fiction, some of which has previously been published across journals and literary magazines over the years. Many of the stories contained within have won awards and been included in the editions […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Book Review: ‘The Witch of Woodland’ by Laurel Snyder
If I were Zipporah Chava McConnell, writing an essay about The Witch of Woodland (the newest middle grade novel from Laurel Snyder, published by Walden Pond Press) for class, I’d probably talk a lot about the themes of Silence and Space. Any theme that recurs is worth mentioning, right? And isn’t it strange? A book […]
Posted inBook Reviews
Book Review: ‘Where Rivers Go to Die’ by Dilman Dila
Whatever else you take away from this review, it should be noted that Where Rivers Go to Die is primarily a collection of horror stories. Deftly created horror, sure, but unsettling — along the lines of the more mild episodes of The Twilight Zone, at its lightest. At its most frightful, expect tales akin to […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Book Review: ‘Bang Bang Crash’ by Nic Brown
Once a drummer, always a drummer? When Nic Brown landed a fellowship to enter the very selective Iowa Writers’ Workshop (where he earned his MFA in 2006), he figured his drumming days were done. He didn’t want to reference his years on the rock circuit with his new friends in Iowa City. At parties, the […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Book Review: ‘Accidental Sisters: The Story of My 52-Year Wait to Meet My Biological Sibling’ by Katherine Linn Caire
I try to imagine myself learning, at age 52, that I have a sister. I think about my own sister and how important that relationship is to me. I think about how much life there is in 52 years — how much identity is formed, how awkward it becomes just making friends as an adult […]
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: Histo — ‘JGDC’
JGDC by histo A near-fatal lung infection gave multi-instrumentalist Donald Curtis a sense of urgency to follow his passions for music and form Histo, according to the band’s bio. The prefix “histo” medically refers to body tissue, but it also can mean “structure” or “set upright” (as in a histogram bar chart) — either of […]
Posted inBook Reviews
Book Review: ‘The Emergent’ by Nick Holmberg
In Nick Holmberg’s debut novel, The Emergent (Koehler Books), he asks whether we can come to understand and know a person through the way they tell their story. The book shows the psychological and moral growth of the narrator, a young woman named Kat, as she challenges her audience to piece together the account she […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Book Review: ‘There’s No Place Like House’ by Taylor Bradley
Much is absent in Taylor Bradley’s latest book. That observation is not an assessment of the component parts of the book — which catalogs segments of Bradley’s life from 2018 to 2020 — rather, “absence” is the aching touchstone of this well-built text. Published in late 2022 by Bradley, a 2013 University of Iowa graduate, […]
Posted inBook Reviews
Book Review: ‘Reading Pleasures: Everyday Black Living in Early America’ by Tara A. Bynum
Scholar Tara A. Bynum, an assistant professor in the University of Iowa Departments of English and African American Studies, is exploring interiority — and exemplifying it. In her recently published monograph Reading Pleasures: Everyday Black Living in Early America (University of Illinois Press), Bynum leverages her research in pre-1800 Black literary history for a deep […]
