Our interview took place over the phone. Justin Torres lives in San Francisco, where he has lived before under different circumstances—in his twenties, he says, in a “wild and total crazy mess.” Now, he’s a grownup: car, house, fiancé, fellowship (Wallace Stegner at Stanford), teaching gig, and heaps of critical acclaim for his gorgeous debut, We the Animals. One can tell from the lift in his voice that his face is permanently engaged in a smile, either from sheer joy (read the reviews) or from shock. Mahogany bookcases lined with the classics were not part of his upbringing. And yet, look at what he’s done. We the Animals is a wild kitten of a novel—ferocious, tiny, loud and delicate in the same breath. This semi-autobiographical novel is comprised of relatively chronological fragments of a boy’s childhood in upstate New York, spent emotionally and physically rough-housing with his two brothers, white mother, and Puerto Rican father. Animals’ structure is as much about memory as is its content, which is at once brutal and heartwarming. Justin (on the phone) is very much the same: blithe and winsome, with shadows of something much much deeper. One wonders if he might have written a dark children’s book instead of this one—as he manages the nostalgia, whimsy and then, boom, rawness, so gorgeously well. –Jessica Soffer Continue reading "Justin Torres"…
Tottenville Blog
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War
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