The Old Maid’s Tale Ninni Holmqvist’s  speculative novel about the treatment of the elderly is harrowing but implausible. The use of the term “speculative fiction” as a more respectable sounding synonym for “science fiction” is attributed to Robert Heinlein, writing for The Saturday Evening Post in 1947. But since then, the two genres have diverged: [...]

One is not the Loneliest Number This brilliant Dutch novel explores themes of loneliness and connection It isn’t easy to write a compelling novel about loneliness, for the simple reason that loneliness is boring. It makes for something of a paradox: the feeling of aloneness, both literal and figurative, counts among love, loss, and taxes [...]

Ick. Just Ick. Charlotte Roche is one of the most famous authors in Germany. Thomas Mann must be spinning in his grave. On the subject of literary criticism, Martin Amis has written that “quotation is the reviewer’s only hard evidence.” But I’m going to quote “Wetlands” sparingly in this review. And that’s for your sake. [...]

Allons’y, Alonzo Two French writers take on the notion would-be writers on the run. Only one gets away with it. I wasn’t planning to review these two books together, as I happened to read them one after the other only by coincidence. However, they have so much in common—and their differences perfectly point out why [...]

So a story I wrote a bunch of years ago was just published on the amazing website, Untitled Books. According to their website: “Untitled Books is a discerning new literary service and online bookshop that combines an authoritative selection of book recommendations with continually updated, exclusive editorial content. The online magazine, features articles, author recommendations [...]

Just wanted to do a little post on Smith Magazine, a really great website (and occasional book series) specializing in memoir, especially of the 6-word variety (After Hemingway’s famous “For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.”). The Smith editor’s blog named Brendan Byrne’s new lit mag The Orphan as one of the “Sites We Love“, and [...]

Basque in the Limelight Bernardo Axtagas’s gripping political bildingsroman may be the first Basque masterpiece. The characters of “The Accordionist’s Son,” the new novel from Basque intellectual and writer Bernardo Axtaga, would be outraged to know their story had been translated into English. In the book, translation is seen as a kind of desecration of [...]

An old college friend of mine, Brendan Byrne (RIP NYU DWP), has just started an online literary magazine for material rejected from other, more “respectable” venues. It is called The Orphan. According to Brendan: “The Orphan is a nascent webzine dedicated to publishing the otherwise unpublishable: marketless short stories, chunks of abandoned novels, beautiful photographic [...]

Don’t Work the Night Shift In this post-apocalyptic tale from Austria, the last man on Earth must come to terms with utter solitude. The first novel about a global apocalypse was written long before there were nuclear weapons or Anthrax. In 1826, Mary Shelley published “The Last Man,” about a plague that wipes out humanity. [...]

Hey Everybody. Here’s a piece I just wrote for the The Arts Fuse, Bill Marx’s fantastic blog on all things literary. I have the whole thing posted here, in case anyone wants to comment, but you can also find it on The Arts Fuse at this link, should you care to see it in its [...]