Book Reviews

What makes Beaton’s book so powerful and unique is her close watch on the day-to-day life of oil sands work. A glimpse into what a lunchroom looks like, assigned housing, a party, a ride in a truck with a co-worker you trust and a ride with one you don’t.

Emily Zhou’s stories have a nice edge to them. At their best, they’re tender and have a nice undercurrent of emotion. There’s a resonance in her 20-something protagonists fumbling around, learning the beats and trying to make a go of it.

This speculative novel provides a window into a fictional New York’s BDSM subculture in an apocalyptic world. Where X shines is in its unique observations.

Rivas’s text — which remix actual Nextdoor posts into fictional dialogues — are both hilarious and alarming. Conversational and matter-of-fact, they reveal obsessions with securing their property, scrutinizing minor disturbances, and calling the police.

J. E. Stintzi’s emulates our distracted and desensitized present with a distant narrative voice, a rash of characters and 232 micro-chapters that rapidly switch between storylines.

In tracing how homebrewed filth developed into the corporatized sex trade of recent years, Samantha Cole does a valuable service. Despite its focus on the past three decades, the book feels almost as much a work of archaeology as pop history.

Over-educated and nominally leftist in his beliefs, Hugh Dalgarno waits around for someone to buy a picture frame from him. It’s a book that’s about nothing, but it’s also a book that is stuffed with ideas and opinions.