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The Jamaica Kollection of the Shante Dream Arkive: being dreamity, algoriddims, chants & riffs by Marcia Douglas

Isabel Beeman — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 18:12:26 +0000

The Jamaica Kollection of the Shante Dream Arkive: being dreamity, algoriddims, chants & riffs by Marcia Douglas Isabel Beeman Wed, 04/09/2025 - 12:12

"The adventurous and immersive latest from Douglas, continues the author’s fusion of poetry and prose with a nonlinear tale combining an escape from slavery in 18th-century Jamaica and immigrant life in 2010s America… ‘Time and space are twin,’ Douglas writes, and as she develops this idea in passages that alternate from prose to verse, the novel takes on a trancelike quality. The author’s originality is on full display in this challenging and rewarding work."

-Publishers Weekly

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Pretty by Jeffrey DeShell

Isabel Beeman — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 18:03:41 +0000

Pretty by Jeffrey DeShell Isabel Beeman Wed, 04/09/2025 - 12:03

"DeShell is a daring, intelligent, hard-eyed, and tenderhearted writer, all of which is abundantly evident in his wonderful new novel. Jeffrey DeShell has managed to make the form of the crime novel erudite, challenging, and entertaining at the same time. What a wonderful trompe l'oeil, a true literary experiment and adventure."

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Whale Aria by Rajiv Mohabir

Isabel Beeman — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 05:11:43 +0000

Whale Aria by Rajiv Mohabir Isabel Beeman Wed, 03/12/2025 - 23:11

"'For seasons I was faceless // trying to swallow constellations, / to roll a star-map on my tongue,' recounts Rajiv Mohabir’s speaker in “Boy with Baleen for Teeth.” As formally visionary and acoustically attuned as ever, Mohabir has composed an interspecies opera in Whale Aria. This collection examines the humpback whale as a zoomorphic analog of the queer, brown, migratory speaker breaching these pages; just as a person navigates postcolonial queerness across geopolitical boundaries, traveling from India to Guyana to London to New York to Honolulu, these singular cetaceans wander through disparate waters."

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The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones

Isabel Beeman — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 04:47:30 +0000

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones Isabel Beeman Wed, 03/12/2025 - 22:47

"A riveting story of heartbreak, death, and revenge, this remarkable work of American fiction, a thought-provoking tale filled with existential terror, unease, and a high body count, transforms, in Jones’ deft hands, from the unapologetic horror novel it most certainly is into a critique of the entire idea of the United States—a critique that, despite the horrors, both real and supernatural, is forcefully infused with both heart and hope."
-Becky Spratford

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