‘Nefando,’ by Mónica Ojeda

by Lillian Burnes Heath

Posted on by John McMurtrie

Mónica Ojeda’s latest novel speaks in many different tongues, including Catalan slang and plain nonsense, and both its triumphs and challenges come from that. Translated from the Spanish by Sarah Booker, Nefando (Coffee House Press; $17.95) details the creation of a darkly twisted video game, the titular Nefando, by three siblings with satellite help from their trio of roommates in Barcelona: Kiki is the writer, her friend Iván is a master’s student with violent gender dysmorphia, and El Cuco Martinez, the most popular and chatty roomie, is a video game designer moonlighting as Robin Hood. Then there are the Teráns—Irene, […]

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The Köln Concert

by D.S. Waldman

Posted on by John McMurtrie

We showed up with a U-Haul and a Prius and could not see the ocean. They lay it on thick there, a friend had said of Pacifica, two, three weeks at a time. We pulled off at the bluffs before taking our things to the cottage on Winona. Five hours it took for the cat

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‘Whitman’s Wild Children’

by Neeli Cherkovski

Posted on by John McMurtrie

Neeli Cherkovski was that rare figure who both chronicled a vibrant literary culture and contributed to its flourishment. Cherkovski, who died on March 19 at age 78, was a Zelig of sorts, long at the center of the literary scenes of San Francisco and Los Angeles; he wrote biographies of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Charles Bukowski, co-edited a Los Angeles literary magazine (Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns), founded the San Francisco Poetry Festival, and wrote poetry collections (Animal, Elegy for Bob Kaufman and Leaning Against Time). A native of Southern California, Cherkovski had made San Francisco his home for […]

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‘The Hammer,’ by Hamilton Nolan

by Jonah Raskin

Posted on by John McMurtrie

According to a spate of recent articles in The New York Times and elsewhere, American workers and their trade unions are “flexing their muscles.” Indeed, a survey conducted by Margaret Poydock and Jennifer Sherer that was published by the Economic Policy Institute says “major strike activity” in the U.S. increased by 280 percent in 2023. Headlines amplify the data. In September 2023, more than 12,000 workers went on strike at General Motors and Ford. In October 2023, more than 75,000 Kaiser Permanente health care workers staged the largest recorded health care strike in U.S. history. A month later, roughly 5,000 […]

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The Seamus

by Tara Ison

Posted on by John McMurtrie

I always sensed beast in the house. From the time I could sense anything, I knew I could reach for and grip onto a shaggy coat, pull myself up to lean against a beastly wall of muscle. I knew the scent of tartar breath, the scalloped air of a swinging tail, the sponge of a

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Notable new books

by Jessica Lobaccaro and Lillian Burnes Heath 

Posted on by John McMurtrie

Martyrdom. Late capitalism. The meeting of Cortés and Moctezuma. They’re all the subjects of new books that stand out this season. Also out are the latest works by Hanif Abdurraqib, Tommy Orange, Brontez Purnell, and Marilynne Robinson—every one of them authors that delve into unconventional terrains with singular styles. You Dreamed of Empires, by Álvaro Enrigue; translated by Natasha Wimmer (Riverhead; $28). Enrigue, a Mexican author who lives in New York City, follows up his celebrated 2013 tennis novel Sudden Death with a historical recounting of Cortés and Moctezuma’s fated interaction. To some, “The Meeting” teleologically collapsed into religious conversion; Enrique spins some sin into this […]

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Locked down: ‘The Vulnerables,’ by Sigrid Nunez 

by Pia Bhatia 

Posted on by John McMurtrie

Sketched from memory by a first-person narrator, The Vulnerables (Riverhead; 242 pages) appears at first to be a kind of memoir, the remains of an aging writer’s observations during her time in pandemic-stricken New York. Considering the volume of novels that have emerged from this period, it’s unsurprising that Sigrid Nunez’s most recent book portrays the city as though it were a still-life object, that the narrator ponders her relationships with the gifts of retrospect and distance. Of course the lockdown demanded self-reflection. Of course it resulted in unusual living arrangements with unlikely groups of people. Even the plot is […]

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Ginsberg in America: ‘Material Wealth,’ by Pat Thomas

by Paul Wilner

Posted on by John McMurtrie

“Unscrew the locks from the doors! Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!’’ So prophesized Allen Ginsberg long ago, channeling Walt Whitman in the epigraph to “Howl,’’ a literary debut that with time seems ever more distant, yet still completely present. Over the course of his remarkable career, Ginsberg resurrected distinguished predecessors from Whitman to William Blake from the tyranny of schoolbooks. He famously served as guiding light, mentor, and press agent to Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, and too many others to mention, bringing the spoken word back into public discourse while remaining at the vital center […]

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What’s missing in ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’

by Greg Sarris

Posted on by John McMurtrie

Killers of the Flower Moon, Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-nominated film, begins with Osage men somberly performing a traditional pipe ceremony. It cuts to a slow-motion scene of tribal members exuberantly dancing in a field, crude oil gushing around them. Get it? Indians are sacred, ancient in their care and devotion to the natural world. Suddenly, though, they will be challenged by settler wealth and greed. In little time, we are then introduced to Scorsese’s central characters: Mollie Kyle, played by American Indian actress Lily Gladstone; Ernest Hale (Robert De Niro); and Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio). Scorsese, with his co-writer Eric Roth, […]

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The Voices of the Whales

by Isabel Zapata

Posted on by John McMurtrie

Translated from the Spanish by Robin Myers 1. I’m interested in the language of animals. 2. Whales, especially the humpback whale and the various subspecies of blue whale, are known to make repetitive sounds with different frequencies we consider to be songs. 3. When we look at animals, we hope to find virtues we lack. 4. Although sexual selection is thought to be their primary purpose, whale songs remain a mystery to scientists. 5. The human body is a symphony. (Charles Ives) 6. The universe is a symphony. (John Cage) 7. Nothing suggests that whales are trying to communicate with […]

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The dead: On writing a thriller set in the rock world

by Christine Sneed

Posted on by John McMurtrie

I met Sarah Tomlinson last year in Los Angeles at a book event for a mutual friend. It was an unseasonably cool night, but spirits were high—our friend’s book was doing well, and it was almost summer. After the reading, Sarah and I had a long, discursive conversation about film, TV shows, and books. During our chat, I learned that after working as a music critic in Boston, Sarah had moved to Southern California in the mid-aughts and transitioned to ghostwriting. She has published more than twenty books as a ghostwriter, and has also written a memoir, Good Girl (2015), […]

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Into the Abyss: ‘Ripe,’ by Sarah Rose Etter

by Jessica Lobaccaro

Posted on by John McMurtrie

In Sarah Rose Etter’s Ripe (Scribner; 276 pages), we follow Cassie, a 33-year-old San Franciscan working at a tech company. Her life is seemingly secure; she makes a comfortable six-figure salary and can afford her $3,000 monthly rent. However, we quickly find that Cassie is unstable and depressed—she regularly snorts cocaine (especially before work), she is dating a chef who has a girlfriend, and she finds herself in the midst of an unwanted pregnancy, all while suffering from a strained relationship with her mother. But most disturbing of all: ever since Cassie can remember, she has had a literal black […]

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