There’s no doubt March has been an incredibly stressful time for our community—it’s our hope with this Staff Recommends that we can, at the very least, recommend some books, graphic novels, films, and other works that might offer welcome relief or distraction as we all Shelter in Place: Alicia Long, Intern: On the upside of things, if you’re stuck at home there’s likely ample time to delve into the ever-accumulating list of shows you’ve been meaning to watch. And with only two seasons and twelve short episodes between them, Fleabag is the perfect series to ease your way into binge-mode. […]
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‘Barn 8’ by Deb Olin Unferth: A Comically Extreme Heist
by Zack Ravas
The premise of Deb Olin Unferth’s latest novel, Barn 8 (252 pages; Graywolf Press), involves the heist of a comically extreme number of chickens—yet to label the novel a mere comedy would be tantamount to calling Kurt Vonnegut a “humor writer.” Sure, the book is funny, quite funny, but it is much more. Unferth is tackling, with great wit and technical skill, topics as pressing as Big Agriculture, the humane treatment of animals, and the impossibility of maintaining ideological purity in any social movement. The reality is that Americans love eggs: free range or not, we will eat as many […]
New Book Releases to Read During Shelter in Place
by ZYZZYVA Staff
Readers and friends, we hope you are staying safe during these trying times. We are all adjusting to the societal changes that are taking place due to the impact of COVID-19. It occurs to us that many new book releases have not received the coverage they would have during a normal news cycle, and their authors’ book tours have been cancelled due to safety concerns. As such, we thought we would collect a list of such books here in the hopes of giving them their due attention, with a reminder that you can order from Bookshop.org to support your local […]
‘Here I Am!’ by Pauline Holdstock: The Messenger of an Urgent Truth
by Alecsander Zapata
The past years have seen a renewed interest in capturing the adolescent perspective. In shows like Netflix’s Stranger Things and films like Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit, the earnestness of a child’s voice in a period when everyone in the audience seems to have something to say seems both timely and necessary. Pauline Holdstock’s latest novel Here I Am! (292 pages; Biblioasis) embraces this trend, shining its narrative spotlight on Frankie Walters, an incredibly intelligent six-year-old with Avoidant Personality Disorder. When his mother dies while his father is out of town, Frankie is left alone; the young boy attempts to tell […]
‘Track Changes’ by Sayed Kashua: A Loss that Reverberates
by Alicia Long
Sayed Kashua’s fourth novel, Track Changes (240 pages; Grove Press; translated by Mitch Ginsburg), is a haunting exploration of the unplaceable loss that reverberates through one man’s memory. Saeed, an Arab-Israeli man hailing from the small Palestinian village of Tira, has long maintained a passion for writing, and he develops a career of ghost-authoring other people’s life stories. As he learns to craft memoirs, drawing out stories and observations from taped interviews with his subjects, he finds that his true power lies in editing. At first, he transcribes the stories precisely as they are relayed to him, but he comes […]
Ring Around the Equator, Pockets Full of Acres
by Chia-Chia Lin
Chia-Chia Lin is the author of the novel The Unpassing (FSG). Below is an excerpt from her short story “Ring Around the Equator, Pockets Full of Acres” from the Bay Area Issue, which you can purchase at the link. You can also apply to our Fiction Workshop with Chia-Chia Lin by submitting here. When Delepine first started running, the air shredded her lungs. Like inhaling powdered glass. After a run, she kept right on sweating and her face kept coloring, peaking at its maximum carmine hue when she was doing something embarrassingly low-impact, like sitting at her desk and rattling […]
‘The Ice Cream Man and Other Stories’ by Sam Pink: Conveying the Toil
by Zack Ravas
Literature is full of characters who experience reversals of fortune or claw their way to the top; Sam Pink does not write about those people. His latest collection, The Ice Cream Man and Other Stories (268 pages; Soft Skull), is comprised of stories about the individuals who wash the dishes at your favorite restaurant, set the plates at your wedding, and yes, drive the ice cream truck through your neighborhood. In Pink’s writing style, words cascade down the page as he creates a line break after every sentence. The ample white space means it’s never long before the reader is […]
ZYZZYVA Recommends February 2020: What to Read, Watch, & Listen to
by ZYZZYVA Staff
Our Staff Recommends for February 2020 includes a look back at some of the most acclaimed films of last year, a novel by Nicole Krauss, and more—so here’s a sampling of what we’ve been reading, watching, and listening to lately: Alicia Long, Intern: In 2019, director Lulu Wang made waves with the indie dramedy The Farewell. Although 2018’s Crazy Rich Asians certainly drew a bigger crowd at the box office, the undoubtable success of these two films so close together made the much-welcome case that there is in fact an audience for Asian–American stories in film. That said, The Farewell […]
‘The Town’ by Shaun Prescott: A Legacy of Erasure
by Zack Ravas
The Town (249 pages; FSG), the first novel by Shaun Prescott, takes place in New South Wales, a region of Prescott’s native Australia that was once home to the Wiradjuri people. The United Kingdom’s colonial campaign in the region erupted into war by 1824, which led to famine among the Wiradjuri, as well as to the destruction of many of their sacred sites. With this legacy of erasure in place, The Town takes a look at life on the fringes of contemporary New South Wales as our unnamed narrator visits the titular town, an isolated smattering of petrol stations, fast […]
A Visit to Two Art Fairs
by Dominica Phetteplace
In the Instagram era, the consumption of art can become conflated with narcissism. If you can’t take a selfie with, does it even exist? The flip side of this is art that warmly invites the viewer in. I thought of this as I was turning a music box handle at the FOG Art + Design Fair, which ran from January 16-19 at Fort Mason. The music box was part of Anri Sala’s 2016 installation No Window, No Cry, (Olavo Redig de Campos) displayed by the Marian Goodman Gallery. A freestanding white wooden frame encloses a clear glass pane that is […]
‘Creatures’ by Crissy Van Meter: Bound to the Sea
by Alicia Long
Set among the seasons and temperaments of a fictional island just off the coast of Southern California, Crissy Van Meter’s first novel, Creatures (256 pages; Algonquin Books), explores the world of Winter Island through the eyes of its narrator, Evangeline. Her story begins just three days before her wedding as she awaits her fiance’s return from the sea, even as a storm grows on the horizon and a whale’s carcass lodged deep in the harbor fouls the air. With her fiance possibly lost at sea and with a rotting whale to dispose of, Evie must also make do with the […]
‘Dead Heat’ by Benedek Totth: A Record from the Abyss
by Zack Ravas
In the Nineties, it wasn’t uncommon for a shocking film like Larry Clark’s 1995 Kids to be marketed as “The Movie Every Parent in America Should See”—the implication being, it’s occasionally worthwhile or even necessary for parents to subject themselves to outré youth movies so as to keep abreast of what their children may or may be doing outside of adult supervision. It’s difficult to make the same case, to parents or anyone, for Benedek Totth’s first novel, Dead Heat (251 pages; Biblioasis; translated by Ildikó Noémi Nagy). The book, which concerns a quartet of teenage boys in an unnamed […]