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.

Tottenville Review

A new review of books focused on debuts, translations, and all works that would otherwise go undetected. It is a collaborative of authors, translators, and reviewers bound by one purpose: to contribute to the dialogue of literature.

Posts Tagged ‘Leigh Stein’

Novel Poetry: Choose the Leigh Stein Adventure

A review of Dispatch from the Future by Leigh Stein

Leigh Stein makes cross-dimensional leaps in her debut poetry collection, her follow-up to a freshman novel that touts a voice relevant to an entire twenty-something year old generation. Encased in Stein’s irony and heartbroken affirmations, Dispatch from the Future does not restrict itself to ending points or starting lines, nor to definite futures or regretful pasts. With quarterly epigraphs from the likes of Horace and Albert Einstein to self-help relationship experts and Choose Your Own Adventure tales, Dispatch promises a relationship with the page, replete with confession, travel plans, affirmation, time travel, and canceled travel plans for time better spent staying indoors and reading books.

Continue reading "Novel Poetry: Choose the Leigh Stein Adventure"…

Dispatch from the Future, Issue 6, Leigh Stein, Melville House, poetry

The Fallback Plan

A review of The Fallback Plan by Leigh Stein

Support The Review; purchase this book on Amazon.

Once in a while, a book comes along that punctures the romanticism of childhood in a cruel yet necessary way. The Fallback Plan is not that book. Leigh Stein’s debut novel envelops all that postgraduates fear: their parents, their future, and themselves. Stein’s laughably gratifying account of coming home again breeds both familiarity and embarrassment. The story, set in a cicada shell-littered suburb of Anywhere, America rehashes the boredom and subsequent anxiety that befalls the young and unemployed. Written with contagious wit, Fallback brings light and humor to a circumstance so often considered dim. The pressing possibility of not so much living at home, but dying a slow, QVC-fueled death on your parents’ futon, fuels the book’s hilarity. Continue reading "The Fallback Plan"…

Fiction, Issue 5, Leigh Stein, The Fallback Plan

Tottenville Blog

Reviewed by David Burr Gerrard

Reviewed by Nicole Casamento

Interviewed by David Burr Gerrard

Reviewed by Valerie Stivers

Interviewed by Liz Moore

Reviewed by Rebecca Kuensting

Interviewed by Ryan Skrabalak

by David Burr Gerrard

Search

Join the Collaborative

Blogroll