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Will Rusty Jump?
A review of Benjamin Drevlow’s The Book of Rusty by James P. Austin This seemingly straightforward question belies the complex meditation on unresolved grief, dead-end contexts, and toxic masculinity that animates Benjamin Drevlow’s novel, The Book of Rusty. The question, as asked, begs an answer: yes or no. As a matter of plotting, the question…
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The Sixties at the Point of a Gun
A review of Library of America’s Crime Novels of the 1960s by Frank Vatel In 1997, the Library of America published Crime Novels, a two-volume anthology of noir fiction from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. It was a watershed for the nonprofit, whose backlist of reprinted authors—literary giants like Melville and Twain, statesmen like Jefferson…
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Radical Softness
A Book Review of Exodus Oktavia Brownlow’s I’m Afraid That I Know Too Much About Myself Now, To Go Back To Who I Knew Before, And Oh Lord, Who Will I Be After I’ve Known All That I Can?: essays and Look at All the Little Hurts of These Newly-Broken Lives and The Bittersweet, Sweet,…
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Our Hearts, Hunters All
A Review of Kelly J. Ford’s The Hunt By Wiley Reiver For all that is lost yearns to be found again, re-made and given back through the finder to itself, speech found for what is not spoken.– William Goyen, The House of Breath Hard on the heels of her two earlier very fine novels, this…
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Standing Up, Standing By
A Review of Dawn Major’s The Bystanders by Jon Sokol The bystander effect is a theory describing a syndrome where normally decent people display apathy toward an injustice being perpetrated in front of them, especially in the presence of other people. Their thinking is that surely someone will do something. The unfortunate result is that…
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A Family Far Afield
A Review of Michelle Dowd’s Forager: Field Notes for Surviving a Family Cult by Marlana Botnick Fireman Harsh but preparatory, bohemian but doctrinal. Michelle Dowd’s recently published memoir details her experience growing up in a family cult called The Field, and we discover that aspects of life which might seem at odds are actually far…
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Songs Out of Time
A Review of Craig Terlson’s Samurai Bluegrass By Ashley Holloway Samurai Bluegrass, the latest from prolific author Craig Terlson, set to be released in July 2023 by Literary Wanderlust, is an action-packed tale of a time-traveling samurai who finds himself in 1984 Toronto. Combining such disparate things such as samurai and bluegrass in a work…
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In Search of Truth and Love
A Review of Dan Leach’s Dead Mediums: Stories By Jon Sokol If you haven’t noticed lately, we seem to be experiencing a bit of a resurgence of the Southern literary short story. In what appears to be utter defiance against the novel-centric publishing industry, a new crop of writers is delivering significant contributions to what…
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Worse Than Black and White
An Analysis of Racism and Double-Consciousness in Dorothy B. Hughes’ The Expendable Man By Wiley Reiver N.B.: This essay inaugurates an occasional series at Reckon Review in which we dive deeply into crime or noir works of note. One of the least useful, or even interesting, debates in contemporary literary criticism concerns whether a fiction…
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To Live Outside the Law, You Must be Honest
A Review of Chris Offutt’s Code of the Hills By Maud Lavin Chris Offutt’s latest novel Code of the Hills (Grove Atlantic, June 2023) is Kentucky noir, with a twist. Or two or three. Offutt delivers a dirty, dangerous, suspenseful, page-turning tale that takes us from the vengeful Kentucky hill country to the gun-ridden streets…