A bold, build-your-own anthology with some impressive names and inspired pieces.
Authors break free of convention in this unbound collection of experimental writing.
Although William H. Gass’ novel The Tunnel (1995) was published as a traditionally bound book, it was first conceived as an unbound volume, presented as if it were a series of papers shuffled together at random. This concept served as the inspiration for this collection of writing, which pushes the boundaries of what types of writing a single anthology may contain. “Being unbound—physically and philosophically—allows the pieces in this anthology to live in any order, to find the fit that works best for any reader, to be read randomly, sequentially, or thematically—or in any other way,” publisher Patrick Davis writes, to which editor Campion adds, “Experiment in such a context implies urgency as well as risk.” Their anthology is a grab-bag of forms and genres, featuring such items as fake book reviews, micro-essays, flash fiction, and stories written completely in dialogue. There’s a series of poems by CA Conrad involving a “crystal grid ritual,” in which the speaker buried a container of crystals and ate dirt at various locations, and a story by Rebecca Rolland about 999 women camped out on a cliffside in an attempt to find “Absolute Music,” whose definition remains vague. There’s a poem by Maria Garcia Teutsch that defines itself as a “psychogeographic” map of Berlin and a story by Curtis VanDonkelaar about old men at the end of their lives, floating up into the clouds like balloons. There’s a poem with sheet music pasted in the middle (“Obituary” by Jay Hopler) and another shaped like a syringe (Andrew Oram’s “Punch Out”). There are also stills of slides from Gass’ lectures, a long poem from Robert Hass’ latest collection, and a soundscape activated by a QR code.
It’s hard to know the extent to which the readers of this book will try to reshuffle these unnumbered pages to create their own order. Many authors have bravely submitted multipage works, which are certain to feel more transgressive when divided and diluted among fragments of others. Not every piece is experimental on its face and, unfortunately, the frenetic nature of the anthology doesn’t necessarily lend itself to close, slow reading. Perhaps because of the experimental theme, the reader’s eye will likely be drawn to poems that are most visibly interesting, such as Kimberly Johnson’s “Ode on my Colon,” which starts off, “in-between: go-between: middleman: middleband: / seam: clothespin: safetypin: safety-zone: / highway: causeway: gutter: bridgestone:…” Another diverting piece is K. Farrell Dalrymple’s story “The Neighborhood,” which begins, “Timothy Woods shot my dog. Timothy Woods shot my dog and killed my dog. He shot my dog and killed my dog, so I shot Timothy Woods. He shot my dog and killed my dog, so I shot Timothy Woods and killed him.” At nearly 350 pages, there are certainly plenty of compelling combinations here, and their inherent randomness is part of the fun.
A bold, build-your-own anthology with some impressive names and inspired pieces.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2022
ISBN: 9780991378081
Page Count: 426
Publisher: Unbound Edition Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him.
Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as told from the perspective of a more resourceful and contemplative Jim than the one you remember.
This isn’t the first novel to reimagine Twain’s 1885 masterpiece, but the audacious and prolific Everett dives into the very heart of Twain’s epochal odyssey, shifting the central viewpoint from that of the unschooled, often credulous, but basically good-hearted Huck to the more enigmatic and heroic Jim, the Black slave with whom the boy escapes via raft on the Mississippi River. As in the original, the threat of Jim’s being sold “down the river” and separated from his wife and daughter compels him to run away while figuring out what to do next. He's soon joined by Huck, who has faked his own death to get away from an abusive father, ramping up Jim’s panic. “Huck was supposedly murdered and I’d just run away,” Jim thinks. “Who did I think they would suspect of the heinous crime?” That Jim can, as he puts it, “[do] the math” on his predicament suggests how different Everett’s version is from Twain’s. First and foremost, there's the matter of the Black dialect Twain used to depict the speech of Jim and other Black characters—which, for many contemporary readers, hinders their enjoyment of his novel. In Everett’s telling, the dialect is a put-on, a manner of concealment, and a tactic for survival. “White folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don’t disappoint them,” Jim explains. He also discloses that, in violation of custom and law, he learned to read the books in Judge Thatcher’s library, including Voltaire and John Locke, both of whom, in dreams and delirium, Jim finds himself debating about human rights and his own humanity. With and without Huck, Jim undergoes dangerous tribulations and hairbreadth escapes in an antebellum wilderness that’s much grimmer and bloodier than Twain’s. There’s also a revelation toward the end that, however stunning to devoted readers of the original, makes perfect sense.
One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780385550369
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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