Book Review

Review: Troll

Troll tells the story of what happens when one never returns from those youthful spelunking expeditions, but instead chooses to live down in the cave with all the bats, snakes and guano.

Review: X: A Novel

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.

Review: Nextdoor in Colonialtown

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.

Review: Artist

Amusing as it is honest, Artist achieves what few can in creating a cultural product about artists that doesn’t fall prey to the temptation to navel gaze or air sour grapes.

Review: My Volcano

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.

Review: If It Gets Quiet Later On, I Will Make a Display

Nick Thran’s book-fueled memoir revolves around Thran’s move from New York City to Fredericton, New Brunswick — in itself a shocking enough contrast that is layered on top of a change in lifestyle (home-ownership) and career (moving to full-time childcare).

Review: Together We Make the Dream Real

An earnest and unfiltered travelogue of the early 2010s, Travis Egedy parses half-thoughts about isolation, extinction, loss and art among a frenzied scene.

Review: Falling Hour

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.

Review: Solidarity Beyond Bars

If prison labour did not exist, it would have been invented by a philosopher playing with employment as a concept: Imagine there were a group of workers who were not permitted to leave a compound for months or even years at a time

Review: Fledgling

What seemed like an entertaining vampire adventure with somewhat sophomoric social insights blossomed into maybe the most poignant metaphorical commentary on racial politics I’ve ever read.