Tottenville Blog

• A Talk with Amy Brill

  18 Jun 2013

  Interviewed by Amy Kandathill

  Amy Brill’s debut novel The Movement of Starsis a story of uncommon depth and precision. Inspired by the life of the mid-19th century scientist Maria Mitchell, Brill weaves an astral tale of a young astronomer’s diligent search for the next comet amidst the complex hypocrisy of race relations thirty years before America celebrated its centennial.

• Tao Lin’s ‘Taipei’

  13 Jun 2013

  Reviewed by Pat Finn

  Taipei follows Paul, a Brooklyn-based twentysomething writer resembling Lin who drifts in and out of parties, relationships, and various chemically induced states of consciousness.

• A Talk with Katherine Angel

  6 Jun 2013

  Interviewed by Meredith Turits

  In Unmastered: A Book on Desire, Most Difficult to Tell, Katherine Angel opens up. This month marks the Stateside publication of the U.K. scholar’s poetic rumination on gender, sexuality, and, of course, desire.

• Curtis White’s ‘The Science Delusion’

  5 Jun 2013

  Reviewed by Pat Finn

  The Science Delusion is essentially an artist’s polemic, not only against the New Atheists but against the ideology they recommend as an alternative to religion.

• Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War

  22 May 2013

  Reviewed by Jeff Price

  In the new gripping and important anthology with a foreword by Colum McCann, short stories about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars hauntingly unfold and reveal truths about our deepest fears and desires.

• Bennett Sims’ ‘A Questionable Shape’

  20 May 2013

  Reviewed by David Burr Gerrard

  A Questionable Shape is ostensibly about zombies, but Sims is much less interested in chase scenes and infection countdowns than in using undeath to explore memory, home, family, love, and the question what makes a person a person rather than a zombie?

• Santiago Roncagliolo’s ‘Hi, This is Conchita’

  16 May 2013

  Reviewed by Nicole Casamento

  Hi, This is Conchitaoffers an encompassing view of the ways we become detached from intimacy and the painful, misguided ways in which we attempt to retrieve it.

• Interview: Claire Messud

  13 May 2013

  Interviewed by David Burr Gerrard

  Esteemed writer and academic, Claire Messud, discusses her new novel The Woman Upstairs,its controversial reception, and our entangled forms of media.