NewPages Blog

Guest Post by Judith Chalmer.

The Inland Sea by Sam Clark is wonderful, full of interesting people left to live out their own mysteries, with rich and beautiful descriptions of the lake and communities on both sides. Evidence of intelligence and emotional complexity is everywhere in the characters Clark has created for his unusually constructed and sophisticated mystery.

An assortment of re-built boats skim across a lake bordered by forest and farm, carrying readers between islands, slamming waves, treacherous rocks, and the unpredictable currents of human capability. Designed with a craftsperson’s care and a philosopher’s depth, The Inland Sea covers a lot of territory.

I finished the book in two sittings, and had to make myself stop in the middle. I can’t wait to recommend it to friends.

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The Inland Sea: A Mystery by Sam Clark. Rootstock Publishing, December 2020.

Reviewer bio: Judith Chalmer is the author of two books of poetry, Out of History’s Junk Jar, and most recently, Minnow. She lives and writes in Vermont.

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Guest Post by Jack Graham.

Paul Beatty presents a roguishly sharp addressing of current race relations within the United States within his Booker Prize-winning novel, The Sellout. In his plight to put his home town of Dickens back on the map, our protagonist (whose first name we never discover) explores notions of modern-day slavery under an Obama presidency, the revival of segregation in schools whilst also acknowledging the blatant racism of Hollywood, hiring black actors simply for their sense of ‘blackness’.

Our protagonist guides us through the chapters with a lexicon that can only be appreciated by sociology graduates, documenting in the earliest pages of the narrative as to how he was a guinea pig for his father’s experiments and torture in an attempt to mimic and alter notorious psychological experiments within the parameters of an African-American lifestyle adjacent to the struggles of a black community in small-town California.

Beatty presents his audience with the complete absurdity of segregation and slave-holding. The author is willing to excite and shock his audience as a means to illustrate the everyday strains of a black community, whether that be the ejection of black communities from city maps, the use of racial slurs, or the tremendous difficulties for black children to attend mostly white schools.

I wholeheartedly recommend that people read The Sellout as means to further understand and appreciate the tribulations of a much-subjugated class to acknowledge the role of often ignored small ghetto-like communities in the path of large-scale gentrification.

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The Sellout by Paul Beatty. Picador, March 2016.

Reviewer bio: I’m Jack Graham, currently studying my Masters in English Literary Studies at Durham University.

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Guest Post by John Cullen.

The title for this review comes from the dedication which opens Deirdre Fagan’s collection of short stories, The Grief Eater.  This collection follows up on the author’s excellent poetry collection, Have Love, but turns its attention to beautifully written explorations of characters overcome with and attempting to live with grief.

In the story “The Grief Eater,” a young woman can’t stop reading the local obituaries and attending the funerals of people she does not know, initially believing she is doing it for the good of the grieving families and eventually coming to a larger realization about herself and the nature of life. “Dressing The Part” chronicles the events of a woman attempting to deal with having lost her husband. At various points she wears her wedding dress to work and discovers a strange yet movingly fitting way of spreading her husband’s ashes. In “Rotary Dial,” a grief-stricken man begins calling people at random and asking for his wife.

The characters in these stories struggle with that most human pain of how to move on from grief and possibly find a livable space. These psychological portraits of characters at extreme crossroads will strike a deep chord in anyone who has thought about mortality or confronted loss. This is an excellent first collection of stories.

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The Grief Eater by Deirdre Fagan. Adelaide Books, 2020.

Reviewer bio: John Cullen’s poetry has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, American Journal of Poetry, The MacGuffin, and The Cincinnati Review.

Guest Post by Dawn Newton.

Jessica O’Dwyer’s novel Mother Mother is not only a story featuring two mothers but also a story about two worlds—a middle-class world in the United States where parents can seek an adoption through public or private options and the world of a Guatemalan mother forced to give up a child in the aftermath of a brutal civil war.

O’Dwyer writes about these journeys from many angles, revealing the complexities and emotional nuances of the adoption process for birth mothers and adoptive parents alike. There is despair, strength, and joy in the details. The juxtaposition of the two mothers’ lives, while highlighting the differences in socioeconomic issues and personal freedom in the two worlds, also reveals the emotional intensity involved in the journey each mother faces.

Just as Saroo Brierley’s A Long Way Home focuses on an adopted child’s journey to find a birth mother while portraying impoverished families in India, Mother Mother presents the stages of the adoption process while also revealing the work to be done once the adopted child arrives—helping him settle comfortably into an American society that still struggles with “the other.” In an incident on a playground just after newly adopted Jack’s arrival, a stranger comments on the boy, comfortable in her assumption that because Jack’s skin color is different from his mother’s, he must be adopted. Julie, his new mother, realizes that she won’t always be able to protect her son from external judgment or evaluation. Like most good books, this novel teaches us about worlds we might not know or understand, helping us to expand our empathy for others.

 

(Disclaimer: This book was published by the small press publishing my own work. While I don’t know the author personally, I consulted with her by phone once on a press-related issue.)

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Mother Mother by Jessica O’Dwyer. Apprentice House, October 2020.

Reviewer bio: Dawn Newton is the author of Winded: A Memoir in Four Stages. Her novel, The Remnants of Summer, is forthcoming from Apprentice House Press in 2021.

Guest Post by Katrina Thompson.

From the moment I began reading Jeff Vandermeer’s “Annihilation” I was enthralled and intrigued by the mysterious top secret location dubbed “Area-X” as well as the suspicious yet compelling cast of characters, all of which have no name and are instead known only by their occupations “The Biologist,” “The Psychologist,” “The Anthropologist,” “The Surveyor,” and “The Linguist.”

The protagonist or “biologist” also known as “Ghost Bird” by her former lover throughout the entirety of the novel, is a self-contained loner who has spent most of her life wrapped up in her curiosities with the natural world, her educational pursuits, or her rich and elusive inner life. The narrative itself is from her perspective and is told through the medium of her journal. But despite the less than traditional narrative style, the pacing of this novel is extremely engaging and left me hanging onto every word wondering what would happen next. I found no lulls or filler in the plot or dialogue. There were only white knuckled, page turning chapters and beautiful, awe-inspiring descriptions of the intoxicating terrifying realm of Area-X!

I highly recommend this book to anyone who’s into the sci-fi or fantasy genres or if you’re just looking for a creepy read to finish off the month of November.

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Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, February 2014.

Reviewer bio: Dreamer by day, writer by night. My rich inner life inspires my whimsical writings.

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Guest Post by Chuck Augello.

In the opening story in Gwen Goodkin’s debut collection A Place Remote, a character references Bruce Springsteen’s “Cadillac Ranch,” but the Springsteen song that best captures the spirit of these stories is “The Ties That Bind.” In “Winnie,” an ambitious scholarship student at an elite college is drawn to a childhood friend, a construction worker chasing jobs across the country and over the Mexican border. Goodkin is a sharp observer of class distinctions; her working-class narrator has a comfortable sense of where he belongs while Winnie struggles for acceptance among her affluent peers. Describing Winnie’s reaction to her classmates’ wealth, the narrator observes, “I could tell she liked it in a way, being around all these people. Maybe she thought their money was going to rub off on her.” The story’s ending is sad yet hopeful, Winnie’s life bringing her to unexpected places.

Goodkin’s dialogue is witty, earthy, and real, and her first-person narrators are unique and memorable.  The tension between staying and leaving is woven throughout the book.  In “A Boy with Sense,” a mother celebrates escaping her rural roots: “‘Best day of my life,’ Mom says with a cigarette between her lips, ‘was the day I left that shithole . . . .'”  Yet her son sees the beauty in what his mother has forced him to leave: “Farming’s what I love. What I’m best at. Mom can think what she wants. I’d stay at the farm for good.”

Over the past five years there’s been a near obsession with the “Red State-Blue State” divide.  A Place Remote is set firmly in the “Red,” but what matters most is the grace and dignity afforded these characters. Fiction allows readers to see into the lives of others and Goodkin makes an excellent tour guide into the remote places where her characters live, love, and dream.

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A Place Remote by Gwen Goodkin. West Virginia University Press, 2020.

Reviewer bio: Chuck Augello is the author of the novel The Revolving Heart and the story collection The Inexplicable Grey Space We Call Love.

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