The Literary Review
  • Read
  • Submit
  • Subscribe
  • Archive
  • About
current issue

Looking Backward

Selections from the TLR Archive

Toggle navigation

An International Journal of Contemporary Writing

cover of the archive issue, type over picture of porcelain sailor boy
Subscribe

Categories

  • Books
  • Coming of Age
  • Editor's Letter
  • Essays
  • Fiction
  • Poetry
  • TLR SHARE
  • Wonder
Fairleigh Dickinson University

www.theliteraryreview.org

A Review of Bolaño: A Biography in Conversations by Mónica Maristain

March 12, 2015

Jody Handerson

(Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, 2014) “I know that my name will resound in the ears of my loved ones as perfectly as a picture. And I also know that sometimes it will cease to Be a name And will be … Continued

A Review of An Untamed State by Roxane Gay

June 16, 2014

Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons

(Shelter Island, NY: Black Cat, 2014) Rape culture is a term, somewhat overused lately, that describes the normalization of sexual assault in a society. Break it down, and you have two charged, weighty words that mean vastly different things to … Continued

A Review of Running Through Beijing by Xu Zechen

May 29, 2014

Jody Handerson

Translation by Eric Abrahamsen. (San Francisco, CA: Two Lines Press, 2014) I was a taciturn and grubby child, a pint-sized pessimist that preferred the company of animals and solitude to that of my family and friends. If not on horseback, I ran everywhere … Continued

A Review of Mad Honey Symposium by Sally Wen Mao

May 8, 2014

Alex Crowley

(Cambridge, MA: Alice James Books, 2014) “I imagine a star. A clove bullet/ ripping through me.” This is one way to render the feeling—a massive nuclear reaction; an intensity of flavor that parts flesh—of losing yourself in Sally Wen Mao’s … Continued

A Review of Nest of Worlds by Marek S. Huberath

April 17, 2014

Cory Johnston

Translated from the Polish by Michael Kandel (Brooklyn, NY: Restless Books, 2014) When Albert Einstein published his special theory of relativity in 1905, perhaps the most jarring conclusion drawn from his new vision of the universe was that time itself … Continued

A Review of People on Sunday by Geoffrey G. O’Brien

April 11, 2014

Heather Lang

(Seattle and New York: Wave Books, 2013.) I can’t put O’Brien’s newest poetry collection down. By this I do not mean that I am propelled through People on Sunday until the end, but rather, that I am compelled to read … Continued

A Review of All Dogs Are Blue by Rodrigo de Souza Leão

March 27, 2014

Daniella Bondar

Translated from Portuguese by Zoë Perry and Stefan Tobler (High Wycomb, UK: And Other Stories, 2013) Reading Rodrigo de Souza Leão’s All Dogs Are Blue is like taking an acid-fueled journey into a mystified reality. The novel is about everything … Continued

The Drift of the World

March 9, 2014

Daniel Wolff

I thought you were an anchor in the drift of the world; but no: there isn’t an anchor anywhere. —William Bronk   You aren’t forgotten. How could so much of us ever be? When you left this life, an anchor … Continued

Why Nobody Reads William Bronk

March 8, 2014

Daniel Wolff

First, it’s hard. Take the opening line from the opening poem of Bronk’s 1993 collection, The Mild Day. “It’s like going to Africa to live.” What? What’s like that? You can scan the rest of the short poem and never … Continued

The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra by Pedro Mairal

February 27, 2014

Jessie Vail Aufiery

Translated from Spanish by Nick Caistor (New York City, NY: New Vessel Press, 2013) The Missing Year, the first novel by Argentinian writer Pedro Mairal to be translated (excellently, by Nick Caistor) into English, is a slim 118 pages, beautifully … Continued

A Review of Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows A Tail by Kelly Luce

February 20, 2014

Dianca London Potts

(New York, NY: A Strange Object, 2013) Continuing in the tradition of Ludmilla Petrushevskaya’s dark fairytales, the jaded yet occasionally hopeful romanticism of Miranda July, and the magical realism of Karen Russell and Ramona Ausubel, newcomer Kelly Luce crafts narratives … Continued

A Review of My Dead by Amy Lawless

February 5, 2014

Mark Gurarie

(Portland, OR: Octopus Books, 2013) From Catullus to Carson, poets have grappled with how to properly address the dead, seeking a vocabulary that can perform the burial ritual, communicate sorrow, can celebrate and perhaps even immortalize. Are words ever enough, … Continued

A Review of Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill

February 2, 2014

Jody Handerson

(New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014) If you had to sum up what he did to me, I’d say it was this. He made me sing along to all the bad songs on the radio. Both when he loved … Continued

A Review of The Sinistra Zone by Ádám Bodor

January 19, 2014

Cory Johnston

Translated from the Hungarian by Paul Olchvary (New York, NY: New Directions, 2013) Every summer, my family and I embark on a week-long vacation to rural New Hampshire. There is a small “old world” style resort there, replete with century … Continued

© 2023 The Literary Review