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Everything That Sinks Must Emerge
A Review of Kelly J. Ford’s Real Bad Things By Wiley Reiver As I made my way through Kelly J. Ford’s stellar second novel, I kept thinking of how much Flannery O’Connor would have enjoyed and appreciated this story. Now, stay with me here. I’m entirely confident that as an artist with a cogent, comprehensive…
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Brutal and Beautiful
A REview of CHarles Dodd White’s Lambs of Men By Chris McGinley Novelist Charles Dodd White knows the Appalachian mountainside. He knows the flora, the fauna, the geography. He knows the waterways and the weather. He knows how the light hits the trees at different times of day, and the way the air of the…
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It Never Leaves
A review of Curtis Ippolito’s Burying the Newspaper Man By Justin Lee There is a line from a City & Colour song that kept coming to mind while reading this story. It goes: “A haunted man who can’t outrun his ghosts. They’re in my skin and my bones.” I feel like that is a perfect…
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Brothers in Harms
A Review of Mark Westmoreland’s A Mourning Song By Wiley Reiver Mark Westmoreland’s A Mourning Song, (Shotgun Honey, 2023) the sequel to his gritty, snarling A Violent Gospel, explores the consequences of violence and loss in a way not often found in genre fiction. To be sure, this second story about Mack and Marshall Dooley…
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Sin & Righteousness in Appalachia
a review of Michael Amos Cody’s A Twilight Reel by Chris McGinley Michael Amos Cody’s A Twilight Reel is simply one of the finest collections of Appalachian short stories around. In its breadth, and in its subtle evocation of theme, it recalls the work of Chris Holbrook, Chris Offutt, or Ann Pancake. Indeed, the twelve…
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The Second Eve
A Review of Addie Tsai’s Unwieldy Creatures By Alex Carrigan Humanity has been caught in a cycle of creation and destruction since the beginning of time. We have many tales of humans being consumed by their creations or their creations causing death and destruction in the wake of their creator’s ideal. Whether it’s Pygmalion creating…
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You Come Too
A Review of James Calemine’s Ghostland America By Kristy Bell James Calemine’s Ghostland America (Snake Nation Press, 2022) ought to come with a warning label. I’ll confess I had to take it in chunks. Certainly not because it was boring or hard to read, but because it left me with a taste of rust and…
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Darkness Breaks
a review of Chris McGinley’s Coal Black: Stories Reviewed by Wiley Reiver The late great Barry Hannah liked to declare this about writing stories: “You get in, you get out.” I suppose that saying could be reasonably interpreted in more than one way, and sometimes I’ve wondered if Hannah himself could or would say what…
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The Full Horizon of Loss
a review of When These Mountains Burn by David Joy review by Chris McGinley David Joy’s newest novel is about loss. It’s about the loss of loved ones, the loss of landscape, the loss of one’s ethnicity, the loss of a way of life. Really, then, it’s about the full horizon of loss. What’s…
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Tribulations of Rural Floridians
A review of The Patron Saint of Birds by Steve Lambert Reviewed by Vern Smith There’s a fair bit of journalism in Steve Lambert’s short fiction. By that, I mean he has real powers of observation when assessing the human condition of the denizens of Sahwoklee County. Or, put another way, he is keenly interested…