Tottenville Blog

• 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.

• Fiona Maazel’s ‘Woke Up Lonely’

  3 May 2013

  Reviewed by Valerie Stivers

  At the center of Maazel’s zany novel is Thurlow Dan, a self-help guru who has recently made an ill-advised trip to North Korea, and who is being spied on by the U.S. Government.

• Interview: Jessica Soffer

  19 Apr 2013

  Interviewed by Liz Moore

  In Jessica Soffer’s debut novel Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots,two women adrift in New York—an Iraqi Jewish widow and the latchkey daughter of a chef—find each other and a new kind of family through their shared love of cooking.

• Nicole Stellon O’Donnell’s ‘Steam Laundry’

  3 Apr 2013

  Reviewed by Rebecca Kuensting

  Nicole Stellon O’Donnell’s debut collection is a novel in poems, resurrecting an old frontier story in creative and bizarre ways.

• Interview: Kristopher Jansma

  22 Mar 2013

  Interviewed by Ryan Skrabalak

  Kristopher Jansma’s much anticipated debut novel, The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards,presents a narrator who always wanted to be a writer. Now, if only he can be reliable, too.

• Interview: Sam Lipsyte

  19 Mar 2013

  by David Burr Gerrard

  ‘The Fun Parts’ seems an ironic title for Sam Lipsyte’s astonishing new book, his return to the short story after three acclaimed novels.