Book Reviews

Designed and executed like a VTuber’s fever dream, Para-Social Butterfly adapts well-worn avant-garde and modernist poetics to stranger-than-fiction internet subcultures to present a surprisingly sympathetic critique of life under the ubiquitous influence of celebrity.

Kim Fu has an uncanny talent for capturing the subtleties of interpersonal relationships between lovers, between mothers, between perfect strangers in the dark, between ourselves.

Joe Ollmann’s latest work follows the mid-life tailspin of Caleb, a recovering alcoholic and only child of world-famous cartoonist. One would expect Caleb’s sad-clown shtick to get tiresome in this kind of long-form work, but it’s a testament to Ollmann’s storytelling power.

Like peanut butter and jelly, dream poems may not be the most innovative recipe, but the taste of the two together is often much richer than their reputation.

The vulnerability in Swollening is best described as teeth being pulled, leaving you “jaw detached and tooth emptied.”

Fawn Parker ridicules the academy and unchecked privilege. She also takes more than a few shots at poisonous celebrities along the way. The result is a truly glorious mash up of the academia of a novel like Lucky Jim and the medieval sand trap from the film The Duel.

“Doesn’t being trolled on the internet go hand in hand with being feminine?” asks Vivek Shraya in Death Threat, an account of being harassed by a stranger in 2017.

Zoinks! The Adventures of Sgoobidoo gives other hapless, cartoon canine paranormal detectives a run for their money.

Mirion Malle highlights problems within mental health that are often overlooked. Imposter syndrome. Difficulties finding professional help. Confronting family. I only cried a little, I swear.

Every porn scene — and there are millions — is a record of people at work. This is the premise behind Heather Berg’s fascinating account of the labour economies that form the adult entertainment industry.

Lee Lai’s Stone Fruit is a shifting story that explores how people grapple to stay together once they’ve reached the goal of escaping a negative environment.

Samantha Garner’s refreshingly original debut novel, The Quiet Is Loud, explores the grey areas between what we say and what we conceal and the stakes of keeping one’s identity hidden.