I woke up about a month ago and realized something shocking: I hadn’t read any literary fiction in more than a month.  

I’d like to introduce you all to an amazing and little known poet, Talvikki Ansel. And yes, I did just interview her for my thesis, so perhaps I’m biased. Nevertheless, she is a poet whose work is worth knowing. Her first book, My Shining Archipelago, was published as winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets in 1996. And her second book, Jetty, came out in 2003. Jetty is out of print but can—and should be—found used.

Almost all of Talvikki Ansel’s poems are in some way connected to the natural world—she has spent a significant amount of time working in gardens and cataloging birds for conservation efforts. This influence comes across in her work, which is laced with botanical terms and filled with experiences from the field.

Although her poetry stands strongly on it’s own, Ansel has often been compared to Elizabeth Bishop. They inhabit similar natural landscapes; have an affinity for odd and quirky images, and employ precision description. In one of Ansel’s more recent poems, “Valentine’s,” published in Poetry Magazine 2003, she writes, “I identified that weird / seed pod”… “Magenta capsule and four orange seeds”… “ ‘heart’s a-bustin’ with love’ it’s called” (12-13, 15, 16). This image seems an apt... more »

Book news! Margot Livesey, who made an appearance on our 25 Books Project for her Eva Moves the Furniture, has a new novel out, called The House on Fortune Street. I was able to see her read from it and bought the book at her reading Tuesday at Porter Square Books in Somerville, MA. It was nice to have something weighty and yet fast-paced for my 20+ hour flight to Korea yesterday. Sort of four novellas that add up to a very full novel, and which elicit a lot of reflection on the characters and the way lives are intertwined. Highly recommended.

So, last week I read an advance copy of the upcoming Jhumpa Lahiri novel. This isn’t any kind of formal review, but here’s what I thought:

Three of the four best stories you could have found in The New Yorker, including the best one, “Hell-Heaven,” which, after reading twice and hearing read once, I’m starting to think may be my favorite story of hers, right up there with “A Temporary Matter.” The fourth is the title story.

The book, or at least the advance copy, is broken into two parts. The second part is three linked stories starting with one from TNY. Unfortunately, that one was by the far the strongest, and the rest of the section didn’t feel finished to me. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she was still working on revisions.

I’d put this book between The Namesake (which I think is more an extremely long short story than a novel, and a story that could have just been a regularly long short story) and Interpreter of Maladies (which I loved and which has one of the all time great titles). It’s good but not a classic.

Speaking of classics, and as an addendum to this post, check this out: http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/reviews/lone_star_statements.php
Congrats to Fringe on their (our)... more »

Small Beer is a teeny tiny press out of Easthampton, MA, founded by Gavin Grant and author of the highly acclaimed story collection Magic for Beginners Kelly Link. They publish like 2 books a year. We love small indie presses, especially when they do wonderful, unconventional books.

Small Beer is the publisher of Elizabeth Hand’s novel Generation Loss. The title refers to what happens to a picture when you copy a copy, not a generation of adrift people. Except of course it does: Hand’s narrator, photographer Cass “Scary” Neary, is a burnt-up relic of punk’s quick arc. She goes to Maine and meets people who are worse psychological wrecks than herself. She solves horrific crimes that have been perpetuated and tolerated for decades.

I’ve never read a book quite like this before. Hand absolutely nails down characters, each of whose world has dissolved without them, and mythbusting the romance surrounding each world: East Village punk; the rural hippie commune; coastal Maine minus New Jersey’s summer cash; even sings a little death knell for film photography. Then weaves a fantastic, horrifying mystery out of these lost souls. And never veers into camp, because these characters are so finely drawn. Realistic? Yes, in hell. It’s totally entertaining.... more »

This is the fourteenth of a many-part series written by the staff and editors of Fringe Magazine, who will be reviewing books from the Pool as part of the 25 Books Project

This idea of the collective unconscious is in keeping with Williams’ web imagery and interlocking narratives. The latter includes three motherless girls, a father who sees the ghost of his dead wife (urging him to join her in the next world), a suicidal pianist, an eight-year old who pours sand over her head, a dog murderer who suffers a Jake-Barnes-injury from a parcel bomb, a retired big-game hunter who listens to the music of air conditioners, a stroke survivor with a vivisected monkey in his head, a dog becoming increasingly paranoid, and so on.

The theme of exploration of life and death (as the title indicates) link these narratives, which take place in a fictional American desert town where the heat and landscape contribute to a certain sensitivity toward portentous images and events. As you would expect, characters die, move on, or are otherwise carried... more »

The end of the year approaches, and so does the end of Ethnos submissions and our 25 Books project.

This week is your last chance to submit writing on ethnicity and race for our second anniversary issue. We are particularly in need of art submissions!

Also, the 25 Books polls close December 31. So speed-read those last few books on your yearly reading list and get voting.

The end of the year approaches, and with it, the closing of Fringe’s 25 Books Poll.

In a nutshell, we were appalled that the New York Times top 25 list included only 2 women, one of whom was the only writer of color on the list. We vowed to make our own list, where the public could qualify to vote by reading two or more books from our pool.

We still want to hear from you about the books you read from the pool, and which novels of the last 25 years changed your outlook, inspired you, or moved you to tears.

The polls close on January 1, so you only have 2 more weeks to sound off and let us know what you think.

Click here to read about the project.

Clear here to VOTE.

Not sure what book to read next? Click here for a list of Fringe Reviews.

Here at Fringe, we love novels, writers of color, and women writers (along with a whole lot of other things like feminism, culture, and judging from our blog tags, more feminism). That’s why the New York Times’ list of the Best 25 Novels of the Last 25 Years made us sad. (As the Guerilla Girls might say, “Hormone Imbalanced! Melanin Deficient!”)

So we launched the 25 Books Project…and now we need to hear from YOU.

To vote, you must have read 2 or more books from the Pool, which we’ve been reviewing on this blog. For each additional book you’ve read, you get an additional vote, up to five.

All votes are write-in — the only parameters are the ones set by the NYT list — only novels by American writers written since 1981 are eligible.

Vote here soon — the polls will close at the end of this year!

This is the thirteenth of a many-part series written by the staff and editors of Fringe Magazine, who will be reviewing books from the Pool as part of the 25 Books Project

Two Cities skips perspectives, delving most deeply into Kassima, a young woman who has lost a husband and two sons to AIDS and violence; Robert, the man who breaks the shell around her heart; and her tenant, ancient Mr. Mallory, a quiet man with a rich inner life and backstory.

The love between Kassima and Robert is a buoy neither expected to find, but one that nourishes long-dormant tendrils of sweetness and vulnerability in both of them. It’s a... more »

This is the twelfth of a many-part series written by the staff and editors of Fringe Magazine, who will be reviewing books from the Pool as part of the 25 Books Project.

Dorothy Allison’s devastating novel, Bastard Out of Carolina, was the last fiction book I read before entering journalism school. The day I started reading it, two different strangers on the train came up to me and said, “that’s a really good book,” and Bastard delivered.

The novel falls into the Bildungsroman category, following Ruth Ann Boatwright, nicknamed “Bone,” who, like the author, was born to a 15-year-old unmarried waitress in South Carolina. The first person voice is compelling and takes the reader inside poor white rural culture.

Although the novel is about abuse, Alison writes against stereotype, keeping Bone’s pedophiliac stepfather, Daddy Glen, looming ominously in the background for most of the book, which keeps the story from lapsing into the sentimental. This authorial choice makes the subject of the book Bone’s early life, rather than the abuse, which shapes, but does not define her.

Due to the subject matter, it’s not the easiest read, but the passion of this book makes its unpleasantness well worth it.

Issue 12 focuses on image and icons. We’ve got pieces on hair and teeth, AIDS, and myth. Read on, brave reader, and don’t forget to vote as part of our 25 books project. A gloss of this month’s issue:

• Brett Allen Smith’s short story Needle! Now! Broken! takes what could be a horribly sentimental plot about AIDS and turns it into something subtly unsettling by fragmenting the short-story form. Is it any wonder that he likes David Lynch?

• Ponyboy, Brad Gayman’s short short, negotiates the bizarre world of the Internet chat room, and the lies we’ve all told there.

• Tammy Ho and Reid Mitchell’s collaborative dialogue, Perfect Teeth, explores a chance encounter in the dentist’s waiting room, the ambiguities that lie behind judgements at face-value.

• Self Portrait in Three Hairstyles, a nonfiction essay by Carrie Jerell, shows how hairstyles, often dismissed as superficial, can change both self-perception and others’ perception of oneself.

• Heather MacNeill’s piece on Oulipos will surely introduce you to a new and avant-way of composing literature.

• Carol Dorf’s poetry is playful, literally in Holiday Season: Playing Dictionary, and mythically in her other two poems, which play with the stories of Hansel and Gretel and Persephone.

• Craig McKenzie’s work plays with image through photo collage, and the concentric circles... more »

This is the eleventh of a many-part series written by the staff and editors of Fringe Magazine, who will be reviewing books from the Pool as part of the 25 Books Project.

Gabrielle Burton’s Heartbreak Hotel runs each of its engines at full capacity. It is completely intelligent, completely feminist, completely hilarious, completely furious, completely compassionate, and it does the whole thing inside out. It is an exhausting book. It is worth the effort, and then you will force it on your friends.

This is a story of the rebirth of the straight white middle-class American feminist, written in the mid-1980s, and it takes place in Buffalo. It is dated, but to a feminist era and type I feel unlived nostalgia for: there’s a Midwest-runaway New Yorkiness about this sarcastic, corny, male-affectionate, DIY feminism; little bits Gilda Radner and Silver Palate Cookbook. Characters are tortured by middle-class feminist questions like, does it bring me pleasure to serve others? I say this without mockery. It’s a good, often hushed question.

Heartbreak Hotel is intentionally written to be diffuse, not like those, ahem, linear books you’re used to reading, and it has the guts to create two-dimensional characters and give each a voice, and through jokes,... more »

This is the tenth of a many-part series written by the staff and editors of Fringe Magazine, who will be reviewing books from the Pool as part of the 25 Books Project.

There’s something about reading a book by someone you see on a regular basis—something that makes the book somehow more personal, more complex, more relevant to your own daily life than it would be had it been written by a complete stranger. This is how I felt, at least, when reading Jump at the Sun, the newest novel by Emerson Writer-in-Residence Kim McLarin. With each page, heroine Grace Jefferson’s story seemed entwined with my own.

Except that Grace Jefferson is an affluent, married, African-American mother of two—demographics I know nothing about. Also, though McLarin is a familiar face around Emerson, I have never had her as a professor or really even spoken to her. So why was reading this book such a personal experience? McLarin’s writing is so visceral and her characters so real that we, as readers, are drawn inside the book.

Jump at the Sun tells Grace’s story from her own point of view, with flashbacks woven in throughout telling the stories of her grandmother and mother. As this triumvirate... more »

This is the ninth of a many-part series written by the staff and editors of Fringe Magazine, who will be reviewing books from the Pool as part of the 25 Books Project.

You know the story: Amir grows up in Afghanistan with his father Baba and their servants Ali and his son Hassan. Baba and Amir leave for America in the 80s, then Amir returns in 2001 to redeem himself for the unforgivable act he allowed to happen to Hassan during their childhood. Conveniently he runs into the same cast of characters in Afghanistan that he left behind 20 years before.

The story is unrealistic. The plot is contrived. Hassan’s character is uncomfortably close to perfect. So why am I promoting this novel as one of this quarter-century’s best?

The inherent flaws work to... more »

This is the eighth of a many-part series written by the staff and editors of Fringe Magazine, who will be reviewing books from the Pool as part of the 25 Books Project.

I was given The Hours, Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer-Prize winning novel. My mother, not a very avid reader, bought it in an airport and handed it to me when I was between books one day. “It’s all about Virginia Woolf,” she said. “I think you’ll like it.” While it’s true that the experience of reading The Hours is richer if you have read Mrs. Dalloway, the acclaimed Woolf novel Cunningham writes The Hours after, the book is a marvel either way.

The Hours tells three stories simultaneously:

• In 1990s New York, Clarissa Vaughn prepares to host a party for her friend and former love interest Richard, a gay poet physically and mentally ravaged by AIDS.
• In 1950’s suburban America, a timid housewife struggles in an unhappy marriage and confining social role, finding her only comfort in reading Mrs. Dalloway.
• And in 1920s England, Virginia Woolf begins to compose Mrs. Dalloway.

Cunningham weaves his stories together on strings, relying on the resonance of certain lines and images, and on the plot points of Mrs. Dalloway. Yet the stories are... more »

This is the seventh of a many-part series written by the staff and editors of Fringe Magazine, who will be reviewing books from the Pool as part of the 25 Books Project.

The History of Love was one of those books I avoided at first. Too many people told me how amazing it was, how much I’d love it, how I should run to the nearest independent bookstore and grab a copy.

All of that made me NOT want to read the thing, so I half-heartedly suggested it for my book club and felt not at all crushed when no one picked it. And then I saw it on a buy-one-get-one rack at the bookstore and picked it up. I really didn’t know a thing about the book (except that people thought I’d like it), but from the moment I read the first paragraph, I was hooked by author Nicole Krauss’s elegant, careful prose.

The author is married to Jonathan Safran Foer of similarly-topiced Everything Is Illuminated. They both live in Brooklyn and write non-traditionally about the Holocaust, and there’s no doubt that Foer is the better-known author. But there was something in Krauss’s book that tapped into my emotions much more successfully... more »

This is the sixth of a many-part series written by the staff and editors of Fringe Magazine, who will be reviewing books from the Pool as part of the 25 Books Project.

After having read Jeffrey Eugenides’ first novel, The Virgin Suicides, I was prepared for his sophomore effort, Middlesex. However, this delightful, titillating, sprawling saga of “the rollercoaster ride of a single gene through time” still managed to surprise me.

Middlesex tells the story of the Stephanides family, beginning in the mountains of Greece and spanning the globe — the narrative jumps from Detroit to Berlin to San Francisco and back again. Our narrator and tour guide for this slightly fantastical journey is one Cal Stephanides, a fastidious and mysterious man in his early forties. Though he hides his past from those in his life, he is frank with the reader from the first sentence, “I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.”

From that astonishing opening, Cal spins the tale of his former self, Calliope Helen Stephanides, her eccentric Greek family, and her... more »

This is the fourth of a many-part series written by the staff and editors of Fringe Magazine, who will be reviewing books from the Pool as part of the 25 Books Project.

How could you not love the opening to Chang-rae Lee’s PEN/Hemingway award-winning *Native Speaker,* in which narrator Henry Park’s wife, having decided to take a break from their marriage, leaves him with a note calling him a “B+ student of life… yellow peril… traitor, [and] spy.” Those first two insults are the best (if we’re judging on cruelty and humor) but the latter two end up scuba-diving Henry into the cove of his Korean-American identity. It turns out he *is* a spy, at least by profession, and this theme of spying, of cultural mask-wearing, of between-ness, is at the heart of the novel and of Henry’s shortcomings in life and marriage.

As the novel progresses, we learn about Henry’s job in cultural espionage, going forward in time, while delving into his problematic marriage to beautiful, white, speach-therapist Lelia, going back. Henry’s latest mission involves getting close to political up-and-comer John Kwang and taking notes on his activities for some unknown, but definitely shady, client, using their shared Korean heritage as... more »

This is the third of a many-part series written by the staff and editors of Fringe Magazine, who will be reviewing books from the Pool as part of the 25 Books Project.

I began reading Caramelo in early August of 2005, after my first year in Emerson’s MFA program. Why do I remember the date with such accuracy? Because the book was so good that I waited to finish it before heading to the eye doctor about the blurry lines in my right eye, which turned out to be a detached retina.

Sandra Cisneros wrote her masterpiece over a period of ten years, and the time she took to craft the novel shows. Caramelo chronicles the lives of a boisterous family’s annual journey to visit relatives (including “the awful grandmother”) in Mexico City. Most of the book is told through the eyes of Lala, the youngest of seven, who is particularly curious about her father’s relationship with his mother. Lala imagines herself into the awful grandmother’s early life — recounting her upbringing and marriage during the Mexican revolution.

Cisneros also embroiders the story with footnotes, musings about the Spanish language (why hot women are often called “mamis”, for example — how incestuous!), and... more »