In his debut Collection, Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever, Justin Taylor channels a few old chestnuts, (I’ve only just gotten started with this book) but it immediately impressed this reader with a nicely chiseled style that’s refreshingly “no bullshit”. There’s a hurricane lashing the coast, and Taylor’s narrator tells us about Amber, and some other girls, kissing, screwing, maybe hopeful screwing, and invents a deserted suburban landscape that is immediately recognizable. Amber stares out the window, so do we, of course this story is titled; Amber at the Window in Hurricane Season.
By the time you see what’s going on in the second story, In My Heart I Am Already Gone, and you witness it by
Continue reading Too young to be this good
JR: There seems to be a kind of wild kinetic energy to Mr. Peanut, the debut novel coming this summer from Knopf. The author, Adam Ross is no where to be seen in these pages, which always signals to me that the trick has been achieved, there is no reveal, the illusion is complete, because you’re only watching the characters that all seem to be present, like they could be your next door neighbors, standing right next to you in line at the train station. I didn’t read any cliché’s in this novel; the dialogue is crisp, so much so, that I was emailing snippets of it to friends and co-workers as
DH: I’ve just let Laura Bell’s memoir of her nearly 30 years in the West reluctantly out of my hands. Claiming Ground has been published by Knopf, edited by Gary Fisketjon, whose master’s touch is glowing in quiet understatement on every page.
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