The Butt is part Orwellian dystopia, part ironic Kafka-esqe bureaucratic nightmare, part bush travelogue and part bore. Self fans may disagree, but I found the second half of the novel tedious and repetitive. What started out as clever and fast-moving becomes bogged down in pseudo-legal machinations and inane conversations tinted with malice and the overt racism of several characters. It simply wore me down after a while, and the shocking ending just couldn’t compensate.

Continue reading The Butt by Will Self

In a plot twist of triangulating elegance, Denise encounters Michelle again and through her is set on the road to literary success. But Denise’s growing personal power scrambles her friendship with Gwen as competition overwhelms their alliance. Laura Jamison has written the life cycle of a friendship from its youthful solidarity to its betrayal with age and “The Looters” is an apt title.

Continue reading Narrative Magazine Story of the Week – The Looters

Eugene Marten writes with a chiseled flair that is basically unheard of in today’s fiction market, at least in the books you’ll find on the shelves in your local stores. There isn’t a simple way to describe it, or how to believe the feelings you have once inside these sentences. Then you marvel at how you got so caught up in this main characters mundane attempt to clean up after people.

Continue reading Waste, by Eugene Marten

The entire novel is a smashing success, and prologue is only a small part, but it’s something of a magic trick. I loved how she turned us all onto these well meaning characters who are soldiering against some gruesome injustice that is going on in the world, only to reveal it for what it is, and ultimately embarrassing her characters with a dose of reality.

Continue reading The Believers by Zoe Heller