The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
He had written DECEASED next to my mother’s name on his return. That threw the whole system off, sending his return into the void for further review. Since the entire IRS was working from home due to Covid-19, which arrived approximately two weeks after my mother’s death, apparently every day was now Leap Day, and perhaps in another four years my father might get his refund.
This week, ACM is posting book reviews every weekday.
Focused primarily on her childhood, Kercheval’s memoir is told in a series of seventeen fanciful chapters—ranging from four to twenty pages each—on subjects including her parents, her imagined worlds, her body (as well as the bodies of others), and the events, people, objects, and entities that shaped her. Shifting metaphors abound.
(reviews)
Between the chapters of the hazy hospital days, Youngblom recollects stories of her son’s childhood and his dreams of becoming a marching band director. She savors the moment Elias first learns to ride a bike and his need for her to hold onto the seat. As the chapters travel across time, the structure captures Youngblom’s stream of consciousness and memories of Elias as gentle and thoughtful.
(reviews)
I tried to envision walking down old cobblestone streets, but my memories drowned in darkness: My brain clasped shut. The doors that were so hard to close when I was leaving twenty-two years ago were even harder to reopen now. But I had to. I had to go back and face the ghosts and the memories. Had to shine a light into all corners of the old dark closet. I was planning a trip to visit my mother in Russia, and as the trip got closer, I decided I was ready to go home. I tacked on a few days in Kharkiv.
(nonfiction/Dispatches from Ukraine)
“Book bans have existed as long as there have been books, throughout history, just like war. It’s a form of war; part of war; part of politics and power grabs; part of trying to keep the population ignorant and deny people books. It’s also part of antisemitism and racism and every other oppressive movement you can think of,” Donna Seaman tells interviewer Carol Haggas.
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
No wonder Mr. Barde is struggling to fall asleep, considering his job where hypertension goes without saying. So, he suffers patiently, reads until impossible hours, and sometimes plays at cultivating insomnia, gaining thus beaches of meditation, wanderings in thought fostered by silence.
(translations)
A renowned poet interrogates his colonized self.
(review)
Thirty-four houses in thirty-four years, as if the idea of putting down roots was anathema to her.
(reviews)
My parents had always had a copy of Kaddish, which my mother urged us to read, but refused to really discuss the book.
(nonfiction)
“It felt good to be in their brainy female world, which defied the patriarchal Latin culture under Franco.”
(nonfiction)
This is the first piece in our new DEBUT section, which showcases the first literary work published by a writer, beyond a campus-only magazine.
“There were no pens allowed at Carrollton Springs because of the possibility of someone hurting themselves with one”
(nonfiction)
With every photo either zoomed in or close-up, I tend to forget how small they are. Nudibranchs range from four millimeters up to 520 millimeters.
(nonfiction)
“If a doctor says, ‘The curve of your spine makes me think of a river, or a snake in action,’ that would make me feel like part of nature instead of an unnatural aberration,” Riva Lehrer tells interviewer Irina Ruvinsky.
“Wilkinson’s knowledge of horticulture helps to connect the themes of family, inheritance, and existence to the greater world around us, to all living things,” writes reviewer Meredith Boe.
(nonfiction)
Nope, Roberta Flack didn’t write that song. Find out more in Thomas Larson’s review.
Another Chicago Magazine 