Jamel Brinkley’s second story collection, Witness (Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 240 pages), records glimpses of lives across New York, disparate but proximate—as though looking at people in lit windows across the cityscape. Lingering in the worlds and heads of his protagonists, Brinkley’s stories elongate these moments into chasms of psyche and memory. They remind us that whatever we see in the window, observation alone is superficial. To witness is a full-body experience, affecting the mind as much as the eye. New York is a familiar setting for Brinkley, whose debut, A Lucky Man (2018), also features stories set in the […]
Crisis mode: ‘Emergency’ by Kathleen Alcott
by Margot Lee
In Kathleen Alcott’s Emergency (W.W. Norton; 208 pages), the tales of seven women whose lives come undone create haunting depictions of desire and harm. Alcott’s first story collection following three novels, Emergency is permeated by a sense of disaster lingering in the wings and about to unfold. Her protagonists are typically clever and have ascended by their tenacity to the middle or upper-middle classes. Yet even in these stations they are endlessly reminded of the boundaries that do not get erased by their bank account balances. Several of them leave their homes, but often become trapped in their escapes. Sometimes […]
5 Questions for Napa Bookmine
by ZYZZYVA
Napa Bookmine has had a good first decade. The store opened in 2013 on Pearl Street, and this summer it moved to a larger downtown location on 2nd Street. It’s also added two other locations, one in Napa’s popular Oxbow Public Market in 2007, and the other in St. Helena. A popular destination for locals, the bookstore also draws tourists visiting Napa County, offering coffee and tea to visitors who might need a pick-me-up between wine tastings. We spoke with Napa Bookmine bookseller Lee Spangler about the 2nd Street store. ZYZZYVA: What’s the coziest spot in your store for reading? […]
No Heroes: On Cormac McCarthy, 1933-2023
by Don Waters
I liked him early on, this author. I read him, and I kept reading, hungry for more. At nineteen, a student of college literature, bored of portraits of artists and odes, I discovered the author at a used bookshop. In little time, I took to him more than any writer on my syllabus. I admired the brute stories the author put to the page. So clear-eyed, but defiant. And terrifying. An uncontained heat drew me to them. The author’s radical diction and syntax were at war with the rules I had always been taught. Punctuation be damned, the books […]
5 Questions for Kepler’s Books
by ZYZZYVA
The Bay Area is blessed to have scores of independent bookstores. One of its leading lights is Kepler’s. The Menlo Park store opened in 1955, two years after City Lights. Like that celebrated San Francisco store, Kepler’s began by selling paperbacks—books that everyone could afford. Its founder, the peace activist Roy Kepler, also ensured that the store would be a cultural center of the community, hosting numerous events that included appearances by the Grateful Dead and Joan Baez. These days, Kepler’s is a community-financed bookstore that’s paired with Kepler’s Literary Foundation, a nonprofit organization that programs events. Now in its […]
Poetry Takes Bloom
by Tess Taylor
In the late spring of 2020, when everything seemed a bit bleak, I received a phone call from my old friend Hannah Fries, a poet who’d known me when I was writing poems and working on a farm in the Berkshires. Hannah is now an editor at Storey Press, and she had a fascinating proposal for me: Would
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‘Gardeners’ World,’ or What I Did During the Plague
by Cynthia White
“Gardeners’ World, or What I Did During the Plague” For that hour, only the earth of his garden. Dark and friable as chocolate cake, thronging with nematodes and fungi, more microbes in a spoon than humans on the planet. A fear-free hour. An hour without my trip-wired heart. Were you aware the peony, like the
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A Small Life: ‘The Librarianist,’ by Patrick deWitt
by Margot Lee
The name “Comet” evokes the fiery and dramatic path of a celestial body, the kind that might portend the end of the world, or at least make for good cinema. But a comet is also a solitary thing, moving silently through the solar system. In Patrick deWitt’s new novel, The Librarianist (Ecco Press; 352 pages), Bob Comet is the curiously quiet carrier of this name. Bob is a protagonist out of step with time and life. On deciding to become a librarian, his mentor tells him that “librarianism doesn’t hold up in our society’s real time … the language-based life […]
Follies of youth: ‘The Rachel Incident,’ by Caroline O’Donoghue
by Yastika Guru
Autofiction is usually accompanied with disclaimers and explanations, shame and caveats. Caroline O’Donoghue’s new novel The Rachel Incident (Knopf; 304 pages), too, is bookended with disclaimers. It opens with, “It was never my plan to write about any of this” and closes with the protagonist saying, “It’s not my story.” Though it is unclear how much memoir this confessional novel actually holds, this conceit of autofiction is marvelously executed—the details of memory feel preciously excavated, the plot clicks in place in that inevitable way of real life. Even at its most alarming—the protagonist extorts an older couple to fund her […]
For Oppenheimer, Bay Area was the spark
by John McMurtrie
It all started with a haircut. Taking advantage of a slow Sunday, Luis W. Alvarez, a budding physicist, was at a barbershop on the campus of UC Berkeley, not far from where he worked at the university’s Radiation Laboratory. Sitting in the barber’s chair, he held that morning’s San Francisco Chronicle, dated January 29, 1939. In it was a wire report that said German chemists had bombarded uranium with neutrons—they had discovered nuclear fission. Alarmed by what he read, Alvarez “stopped the barber in mid-snip, and ran all the way to the Radiation Laboratory to spread the word.” In what […]
White Tears: ‘Yellowface,’ by R.F. Kuang
by Margot Lee
With her fifth novel, Yellowface (William Morrow; 323 pages), R.F. Kuang promised a departure from the speculative genre work of her fantasy Poppy Wars trilogy and science fiction Babel (2022), winner of the 2022 Nebula Award for Best Novel. Yellowface is a biting satire about the publishing industry, informed by Kuang’s own experience as a Chinese American writer who regularly tops bestseller lists. It follows the publication of protagonist June Hayward’s second novel, a historical drama titled The Last Front about Chinese laborers who fought for the Allied Forces in World War I. Kuang writes for a wide audience, and […]
‘The epic nature of our own stories’: A conversation with Héctor Tobar
by John McMurtrie
Héctor Tobar has explored Latin American history and the Latino experience in numerous award-winning best-selling works, ranging from novels (The Last Great Road Bum, The Barbarian Nurseries, and The Tattooed Soldier) to nonfiction books (Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free and Translation Nation: Defining a New American Identity in the Spanish-Speaking United States). Tobar has also published fiction and nonfiction in Zyzzyva. In his latest book, Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino,” Tobar delves with great candor […]