fiction
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Review of The Eye of the World (The Wheel of Time, #1) by Robert Jordan
Book 1 of 14, read before the Prequel. First published novel of the Wheel of Time Series.The series totals out at 11,898 pages and over 4 million words. Many might be intimidated by its length. But consider that the Harry Potter series is over 1 million words, and I know…
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Review of The Unabridged Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe
When choosing which single volume of Poe’s to keep in my collection I settled on this one. I decided against the Library of America edition of the tales due to conspicuous absences in the Table of Contents. This one has all of my favorite poems, stories and a few essays.…
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Review of In the Heart of the Heart of the Country and Other Stories by William H. Gass
I think I am going to like this Gass, I thought, and here I am, at the end of it, hovering between four and five stars, as I so often do, but settling for that generous bedizening – the whole roster of stellar units. Linked only by nefariously complex sentences,…
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Review of The Body Artist by Don DeLillo
A sensual, hyper-real Delillian song. Donnie’s poetic prose lilts in sustained focus through ghostly sibilance, sinusoidally evocative and throb-inducing. A brief encounter and a drawn-out epiphany. An instant under a microscope reveals such texture as the merely human eye cannot perceive. The hero of this novel is the author. Its…
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Review of The Dreamed Part (Trilogía las partes #2) by Rodrigo Fresán
Fresan’s second part is a dream incarnate. It contains a plenitude of poetry, mixed similes, mingled metaphors, quirks, smarm, charms, verve, meandering melancholia, free-form, dare-I-say dreamlike anomalies, pop-quoting, trans-textual, atemporal, hallucino-generic, and anti-modern coagulations of language. It quivers; it writhes. What with all the billowing prose exudations, the quavering, stuttering…
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Review of The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter
My first reading of Angela Carter. I can see why she is popular and well-regarded. This book is about as good as retellings of fairy tales could be. Through rabid exorcisms of imagery mesmerizing moments are born from her disturbing imagination. The dense sentences cluster like a nest of snakes,…
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Review of Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami,
What is one to make of Murakami’s short stories? His translator has stated that his reputation was made by his stories in Japan – apart from his super-successful novels. A brief survey of his total story output reveals that he is not interested in traditional story forms. Though many of…
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Review of Lake of Urine by Guillermo Stitch
This original work begins as a comedy of sophisticated, staged moments, which appear to be ill-planned mishaps misfiring with intriguing results. It is a distinct and satisfying form of entertainment. Stitch’s novel, however, turns out, by and by, to be much more. Simple concepts are infused with elaborate invention, complex…
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Review of A Harlot High and Low by Honoré de Balzac
There is a singular “textual pleasure” in reading Balzac, once you’ve acquired the taste. It’s decadent. In this unofficial sequel to Lost Illusions, Balzac exercises his capacity to depict psychological tortures. Though I have not read the first novel in this sequence, the four parts of Harlot High and Low…
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Review of Laura Warholic; or, The Sexual Intellectual by Alexander Theroux
Rollicking Lowra Roarholic is a book in which a massive quantity of wisdom may be gleaned between the lines, through oblique interpretations of satirical storytelling. The author employs a wide range of styles, some of which I’ll describe. Ultimately, it is a harrowing, difficult, exasperating, and tremendously meaningful book. A…
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Review of The Invented Part (Trilogía las partes #1) by Rodrigo Fresán
As much as I would like to rate this book 4 stars, I cannot. It was too clever, too deep, too fluid, too geometric, too weird. I devoured portions of it, and felt myself drowning during other portions. It took me quite a while to finish. I had to rent…
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Review of Phosphor in Dreamland by Rikki Ducornet
Extravagant!Like Nabokov, Rikki Ducornet delights in the use of vibrant language. Unlike Nabokov, she has been hiding in plain sight for years. I had to ask myself why I haven’t read her work before. What took me so long? Segments of this novel reminded me of the work of Gabriel…
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Review of Bellefleur by Joyce Carol Oates
I found this novel, above all, to be exuberant, ambitious, bold, and extremely readable. JCO has wrung all the suggestion and menace she could from her sumptuous setting. Not familiar with the author’s infinite body of work – I have only stumbled across a few short stories, liked them, and…
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Review of The Hill of Dreams by Arthur Machen
Arthur Machen is, along with Blackwood and Bierce and Clark Ashton Smith, an early proponent of weird/ supernatural horror fantasy. Whereas Lovecraft seemed to revere Dunsany, Machen’s influence is not as apparent. He seems to inhabit the outskirts of literature, as no one’s favorite. From the get-go The Hill of…
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Review of Untold Night and Day by Bae Suah
What starts as a quiet tale of a struggling middle class youth in Korea becomes a disorienting and surreal fable of identity, love, and art. At the intersection of Murakami and Kafka, Bae Suah occupies her own corner of contemporary literature. At times as light and charming as Banana Yoshimoto…
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Review of No Longer Human by Junji Ito, Osamu Dazai
Oddly, this is not the only manga adaptation of Osamu Dazai’s novel. It is the only adaptation you will need, but it is not necessarily easier to read than the original. It is 600 pages of interrelated scenes, and masterful, atmospheric artwork, which require just as much concentration as any…
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Review of The Golden Lotus Volume 1: Jin Ping Mei by Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng
Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng was the author of one of the 5 Great Chinese novels. This is his contribution to immortal letters. There are many English versions of Jin Ping Mei. The five volume edition, which is more than 2000 pages in length, suffers from hundreds of pages of notes. If…
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Review of Selected Short Stories by Honoré de Balzac
Balzac, I have found, is one of those authors you can read for your whole like, like Dickens, spreading out the oeuvre as necessary Balzac’s books, in my opinion, are not to be consumed like snacks or junk food. They are hearty vegetables, often not terribly exciting, but vigorous and…
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Review of The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories
Since I’ve read every word Haruki Murakami has published in English I felt obligated to read his introduction once it showed up in the preview on Amazon. People saying “Haruki Murakami is my favorite author” has now become a cliche. But cliches can sometimes be true. His introduction was nice…
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Review of Peace by Gene Wolfe
I never expected so much depth. While it is barely Science Fiction, it is most certainly literature of the highest caliber. Like Faulkner, Wolfe constantly cripples the reader’s understanding with his obscure perspectives and elegant suggestion. Chronology and irony are never explicit, and characters are always hiding pieces of their…
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Review of Fado Alexandrino by António Lobo Antunes
Grandmaster of Metaphor Trying to come up with the right word to describe Antunes’ prose is difficult. Any comparisons are superficial, but I’ll mention all the writers he resembles in minor ways. The best single word I could find was “tintinnabulation.” That’s what his words do. They rattle around in your…
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Review of The Hidden Girl and Other Stories by Ken Liu
Ken Liu is one of my top five favorite short story writers working today. And he is really the only one of the bunch being prolific. I believe he has published over 80 stories in most reputable speculative fiction magazines over the past 10 years. He attained the remarkable feat…
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Review of Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami
Mieko Kawakami’s novel Breasts and Eggs is a bold literary statement and another first person, modern, feminist novel from Japan. Staking a claim among literary celebrities like Banana Yoshimoto, Hiromi Kawakami, Natsuo Kirino, and Yoko Ogawa, it would almost appear that the future of Japanese Literature is female. It would…
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Review of Crash by J.G. Ballard
A 2008 interview with Vice quoted infamous mangaka, Shintaro Kago, saying: “Shit and sex are merely the starting points, and unless you can tick those off you can’t even begin thinking about a narrative.” Grotesque literature has its paramours, and Ballard sits in the ranks of William S. Burroughs and…
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Review of The Land at the End of the World by António Lobo Antunes
Antunes tunes into vivid illusions. Had I known of his work, I wouldn’t have bothered reading László Krasznahorkai. Mr. Lobo’s work has the same breathless fluidity, but the imagery is stronger, the dramatic pulse is quicker, and it appears far more inclusive, as opposed to the Hungarian’s stark Beckett-like isolationism.…
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Review of Parade by Shūichi Yoshida
Parade is a seamy novel by a Japanese novelist. It does not fit nicely into the “crime novel” formula. Its characters do not care if you are staring at them in horror and fascination. Its plot is not concerned with your level of patience. Though it has a similar texture…
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Review of The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa
A very interesting book. No plot, no realistic characters, no dialogue. It’s not strictly philosophy, or poetry, or a diary. It is a mixture, a concoction. Aside from a few topical details, it might have been written by a Chinese, or an American, or anyone. Did you ever have a…
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Review of The Miner by Natsume Sōseki,
I didn’t expect this novel to leave such a big impression on me. It seemed like a throwaway novel in Soseki’s oeuvre, with hardly any character development, almost no plot and little adornment. But it is a subtle exploration of character, theme and atmosphere. It’s an adventure novel disguised as…
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Review of 2666 (2666 #1-5) by Roberto Bolaño
Read on a cruise ship. And I remember very little else about the cruise itself. This was eight years ago, but the book stands out in my mind, murky but stamped among the convolutions of my hippocampus. This book reaffirmed why I love reading. It is a book of literary…
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Review of The Royal Family by William T. Vollmann
Swept away by the alternately sensuous and utilitarian prose, the incredible diversity of emotions I encountered while reading this book defied strict categorization and boggled my mind. It felt like my brain had tipped sideways and any trite notions of innocence I might have held in reserve in the untouched…
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Review of Unbabbling by REYoung
This Dalkey Archive discovery is deceptive in its approach but memorable in the extreme. The prose is packed with slapstick, imagery and song, an equal ratio of panic and satire, passion and heartache, while it bubbles over with bombast, belligerence and, after acclimatization, brilliance. Truth be told, it took about…
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Review of Sea Above, Sun Below by George Salis
Sea Above, Sun Below by George Salis is a rich and masterful novel. While reading it, from the beginning to end, I never doubted I would rate it five stars. It is a balanced reading experience, told from differing perspectives, chockablock with symbolism and allusion and wordplay. The descriptions of…
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Review of Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier
I devoured this scrumptious coming-of-age novel in two sittings. On the level of voice, character development, and humor it struck all the right chords. It’s Catcher in the Rye with a female lead, more modern, more swear words, and just more adult. Easily a cult classic, it was one of…
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Review of The Woman in the Dunes by Kōbō Abe
One of my favorite books of all time. One of the best film adaptations of a book as well, done by Hiroshi Teshigahara in collaboration with Abe. Both are equally mesmeric. Kobo Abe’s well-honed, surreal worlds became etched permanently in my mind, and this novel more than his others. Even…
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Review of If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino
Intrigued by the title, one day I opened this book, didn’t get it, put it back, saw it again years later, did the same thing, stumbled upon it again years later with a sense of déjà vu, read no more than a few pages. For some reason, it seemed as…
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Review of Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Infinite Jest – the kind of book that, when it is mentioned, creates a hushed silence of mingled awe and fear in the room. A brick of a tome of a journey of a boy and his harried growth in spurts of tennis-fueled tragedy. An obsessive, compulsively readable, unreadable contradiction.…
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Review of Antkind by Charlie Kaufman
A literary apocalypse of compulsive cinematic ungendering. More Kafkaesque than Kafka. More borgesian than Borges. Less Shakespearean than Homer. These accolades mean everything and nothing. Because accolades, in any form, tell partial half-truths, like any communicable piece of information, as Kaufman shows us ad nauseam, in this Rabelaisian charade of…
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Babel: An Interview with REYoung
Thanks to The Collidescope for publishing the interview with author REYoung: Check it out Here.
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GoodReads Giveaway
Undertones is now available for a limited time as a Goodreads Giveaway. Enter for your chance to win a copy. Click Here: Dane was a reliable guitarist until he got addicted to ants. Now he’s just a giant anteater with an abysmal grade point average. On a date with lead…
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Undertones, an Excerpt
Thank you to Bewildering Stories for publishing an excerpt from Undertones. Check it out. Click Here:
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Interview in The Collidescope
Thank you to The Collidescope for the interview. Check out this fascinating literary publication for informative and brilliant content. Click Here
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The Egg & I, a short story
My new short story was published in Red Fez. Check it out! Click Here
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UNDERTONES
Our Noir / Fantasy novel is now available. Click Here Also Available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble! Click Here
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new flash fiction
Check out our flash fiction in Havok on June 12th, 2019 and vote for it!
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How to Train Your Slime, flash fiction
Bull & Cross published a new flash fiction story by L. S. Popovich! Click Here
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The River Waits, a short story
Now available in issue 705 of Bewildering Stories! Click Here
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The Tale of Nathaniel Ravendrake, a short story
Bewildering Stories published my new short story. Click Here
L. S. Popovich 