Reviewed by Daniel James Sundahl Mark Beaver’s Suburban Gospel is one more memoir of an adolescent wandering toward adulthood, a Bible Belt Baptist southern version of Roth’s Portnoy but without the gnawing sense of psychological guilt expiated on the analyst’s couch. It is, on the other hand, exuberantly “guilt-edged,” the saga of a young man […]
Archives for April 2016
“The Redeemers,” by Ace Atkins
April 22, 2016 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Daniel James Sundahl I’m guessing it would have been 1976, graduate school, and a seminar in the American 1930s, history, literature, political thought, economics, and culture, the latter the more encompassing word in that list. I thought to make an argument that “nascent” to American Literature during that decade was the emergence of […]
“Between Black and White,” by Robert Bailey
April 18, 2016 by 1 Comment
Reviewed by Claire Hamner Matturro Following the success of his powerful debut legal thriller, The Professor (Thomas & Mercer 2015), Bailey offers a second, stunning story in the series. In his novel Between Black and White (Thomas & Mercer March 2016), Bailey establishes beyond doubt that he is an author to be read and reckoned […]
“A Different Harbor,” by Elizabeth Genovise
April 16, 2016 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Daniel James Sundahl The five stories in Elizabeth Genovise’s A Different Harbor mark her publishing debut and are impressive for their clear-eyed compassion. The stories are beautifully intimate and intensely direct, poignant journeys into the burl-wood heart of what it means to be not only humanly complicit but also safe from strife while […]
“The Gospel of the Twin,” by Ron Cooper
April 14, 2016 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Donna Meredith With his third novel, The Gospel of the Twin, Ron Cooper delves into very different and far more controversial territory than his earlier fiction, Hume’s Fork and Purple Jesus. Those were satirical in tone, peopled with wacky characters. In The Gospel of the Twin, Judas Didymos Thomas, now eighty years old, […]