[{"id":104799,"date":"2026-09-28T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/?p=104799"},"modified":"2026-09-26T16:53:28","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T21:53:28","slug":"matthew-prigge-dogs-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/2026\/09\/28\/matthew-prigge-dogs-day\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bank Robbery That Dramatized Gay Liberation: An Interview with Matthew Prigge on “Dog’s Day”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Matthew Prigge is an author and librarian at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He has written several books, including Outlaws, Rebels, & Vixens<\/em>, which was made into a feature-length documentary about film censorship. His newest book, Dog\u2019s Day<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, is an examination of the story of John Wojtowicz, the bank robber who inspired Sidney Lumet\u2019s hit film Dog Day Afternoon<\/em>. The book is an in-depth dive into the lives of John, his accomplices, and his lovers, during a significant time of political unrest and queer protest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Matthew joined me for a Zoom interview to discuss his relationship to the film, his research methods and resources, and the complicated life of John Wojtowicz. It was a true pleasure to discuss one of my favorite films and this important book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This interview has been edited for length and clarity<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Ashley Hatzenbihler<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This book is about the story that inspired Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon, which recently celebrated its 50th anniversary, but it’s also about so much more than that. It\u2019s a portrait of a pocket of the LGBTQ+ community in New York in the 60s and 70s, kind of rooted in this story about a bank robber. What drew you to this story and these people? Did you have a relationship with the movie before this?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Matthew Prigge<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, I think I first saw the movie when I was in high school. I kind of became a movie kid at that time, and I was going back and watching a lot of stuff from the 70s, and I don’t remember exactly when or how I came across Dog Day Afternoon<\/em>, but it’s probably been one of my 5 or 10 favorite movies since the first time I saw it. I mean, I was just transfixed with it. It was just a perfect movie to me. I actually had the two VCRs set up so you could dub a tape from the rental store. That was my copy for a long time. So my interest absolutely came through the movie, and then at some point I started getting interested in the true story, so I started looking up stuff on the actual robbery. I came across the Life Magazine<\/em> article, and really, I’ve had the idea to do this book for\u2026 God, like 15 years now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it was just an idea and I didn’t know the resources out there existed to write a book about it. And if I had known they existed, I wouldn’t have known how to get to them. So it really was that two hours Lumet uses to describe this story that introduced me to this story. Then eventually I found out about some of the other documentaries that were out there about the incident, and I found those really fascinating. It actually wasn’t until I started as a research librarian at Marquette University that the idea of the book took hold, because at that point, I had access to their archival collections and their digital resources, so that was how I was able to consider that I might be able to really find out more of the story than I’d been exposed to so far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ashley Hatzenbihler<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What specific resources were the most useful for you once you were able to really dive into the story?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Matthew Prigge<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everything that was written about it in the gay press at that time. And certainly I did use, like, the New York Times<\/em>, New York Post<\/em>, the Long Island newspapers, all that kind of stuff. They wrote about it a lot, but that was really one small part of the story, and then I got into the newspaper called Gay<\/em>. It was being published in New York City at that time. And stuff that was in The Advocate<\/em>. Journalists Randy Wicker and Clifford Jarre were writing about the gay community at this time. So I was reading through their stuff. There’s just two names off the top of my head, there’s a whole lot more. But the debate that this robbery sparked in the gay community and that discussion was really fascinating to me. Because that point of view was a lot different than you saw in the more mainstream press. And that made it clear to me that there was a whole other story to be told here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ashley Hatzenbihler<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So not only are you building on the story that we see, as you said, in those two hours, which really was just a flash in the pan of what was actually going on in New York, and even just a slice of what was going on in John\u2019s life, but the book also builds a picture of the larger undercurrents of queer movements at the time, and kind of John’s place, or lack thereof, in those movements. And it’s impossible to view those movements in isolation, especially considering the renewed rise of anti-queer rhetoric and policy. So what struck you the most about that aspect of the story as you worked through the book?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Matthew Prigge<\/p>\n\n\n\n

John’s relationship to the gay community and his trying to frame this as a political act was a really interesting aspect of this to me, because he was a fascinating character. He\u2019s absolutely the wrong person to be called to account for what he did, if you’re framing it as a political act, because he had just no concept of what the struggle was about, really. But at the same time, I think one of the striking things about this is that debate was going on in the gay community about whether robbing a bank and saying \u201cI’m a gay man, I need this money to make my life right\u201d was a valuable and political act. And there were people who came down on both sides and there’s reasonable arguments on both sides, but the people who actually knew John as a person and had encountered him experienced hesitance to even engage in the debate, because this person is not well and whatever we’re ascribing to this, he did not mean this. This is just a completely selfish act on his part. But at the same time, there was nobody else who was willing to do anything like this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Say what you will about his motivations, he did take a gun into a bank and tell everybody, \u201cI’m a gay man, I need this to make myself right, I’ve been failed by everybody. This is what I’m doing. This is who I am.\u201d So trying to put all that together, it’s the absolutely wrong person to have been put in this position, but also, maybe the only person who would have ended up in this position. I thought that part about it was really interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ashley Hatzenbihler<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was struck in your book at how you did an incredible job of weaving together what you were able to learn about John, how he was portrayed in the movie, and then also how he reacted to that portrayal. John was not really someone to root for. He was quite cruel and selfish and destructive, and the book kind of deconstructs this myth that the robbery was only a political act or only to fund his wife’s transition surgery. How quickly into this process did you realize how different John was from how he was portrayed and what was the process like of weaving together all these versions of John?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Matthew Prigge<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s a good question. There’ve been a few documentaries that have been made involving him. I think the most prominent one was The Dog<\/em>, which came out after his death. He gets a lot of time on camera in that and they’re following him in the last years of his life, and he’s telling his version of events, and I think it’s a really interesting artifact, because you get to see how he adopted the Dog Day Afternoon<\/em> story as his own. And also, you can see that he’s a very charming person, and he’s got a lot of charisma, and he certainly manages to seduce the audience while telling his version of events. And the documentary makes it pretty plain too. They talk to other people in his life and his ex-wife, Carmen, who says plainly \u201cHe\u2019s not a good person. He ruined my life in a lot of ways.\u201d That idea or that sentiment about the two sides to him, this charismatic side, and then his very controlling side, the need to dominate, and his inability to consider the feelings of anyone else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I’m not sure what my opinions of him were when I started out, but they definitely darkened as I got deeper into this, especially hearing Liz Eden’s side of things, and how in the period between the end of their relationship, which is often portrayed as a marriage, and the bank robbery is really, really dark. He made her life just absolute hell. He was threatening to kill her, constantly showing up where she worked with a gun, dragging her out into the street, physical abuse, mental abuse, stalking her friends. It\u2019s hard to square that behavior with any sympathy for him. I don’t know if you really see who he is, but you see part of his personality, and part of what he’s capable of, and how he treats the people who are in his life, who he supposedly loves and who might love him. Once I went through that part of the research and kind of squared all that up, I really saw all the little signs and everything else, about how everything is always about him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I was putting this together, I actually kind of was thinking of this as a love story, but involving this person who really liked the concept of love, but just didn\u2019t know how to functionally participate in it. Because he considers himself to be a romantic. He has love for all these people, but he just can\u2019t do anything that isn\u2019t self-serving in some way, and really can\u2019t consider the feelings of anyone else around him. But he still says he loves all these people. He\u2019s got all this love in his heart. He wants to get married constantly. So, to me, that was what I tried to articulate about his character. In a lot of ways he didn\u2019t really know what he was doing, but he did it often enough, and you witnessed the impact it had on other people often enough, that there’s no way to excuse him for this behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a quote from George Heath, whom he married in a prison yard ceremony, and was also his jailhouse lawyer. He said, paraphrasing, as much love as there is between me and John, I would never trust him to do anything right. And I still think that\u2019s probably the best single-sentence description you can have. For someone who is in a relationship with you and feels love for you to say you\u2019re never going to do anything right is really, really telling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I read that, I’m like, yeah, he gets it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ashley Hatzenbihler<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

John was in a heteronormative marriage with a woman named Carmen, (Angie in the movie) and in another unofficial but still blessed marriage with Liz Eden, who’s deemed Leon in the movie. And in the movie and in real life, it seems that John refused to use Liz’s preferred name and pronouns, referring to her as his wife, but still using he\/him pronouns to refer to Liz, and using Liz’s deadname. And obviously, the language and the emphasis on pronouns was different at the time, and you address that in the book. But you made a choice, that I’m assuming was deliberate, throughout the book to maintain Liz’s name and preferred pronouns, even in direct quotes from John, often correcting the pronouns. What led to that decision, and were you trying to communicate something in doing that?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Matthew Prigge<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my narrative, I wanted to use she\/her pronouns, because from what I’ve read, that’s how she lived the last part of her life, so I was going to respect that. I wanted to be very sensitive moving through this to the language that’s going to be used in this. Things are always changing and evolving, so even from the early stages, I did workshop this with an LGBTQ writing group at Marquette. I went through it with that group, and had good conversations with them, got feedback from them. Then once I got with the publisher, Counterpoint, they have published similar works before, dealing with similar language issues. So I had an idea in mind of how I wanted to approach this, but then a lot of it was just listening to other people who were more qualified or who are always thinking about preferred language and preferred nomenclature. So, I had an idea of what I wanted to do, and then it was just me doing a lot of listening and taking the advice of others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ashley Hatzenbihler<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We’ve talked a lot about John. But we get much less of other people, particularly Sal and Liz, in the movie, so I’m assuming a lot more came about them as you worked through this research. How did your relationship with Liz and Sal evolve, and what was it like by the end of the book? What kind of feelings did you have towards them?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Matthew Prigge<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You know, Sal is an interesting character and person in all of this, because he\u2019s the only character in the movie who uses the name of the actual person. And once I got into this a little more, I felt it was very fitting, but I think not in a good way. Because he kind of gets overlooked in this. One of the biggest differences from the film to real life is that the actual Sal was an 18-year-old street kid, a young gay man who grew up in New Jersey. His mother was in and out of jail, he had a few sisters, he had a pretty decent arrest record, mostly for theft and drugs and things like that. Reading stuff from people who actually knew this kid, it’s really a heartbreaking case. He didn’t seem to be mean or vindictive, really. He was easy to manipulate. If there was a way to make money that wasn’t strictly legal, he’d probably go along with it, because that was just kind of his nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reading his motivations for going along with the robbery, there are a few. I think one of them is that he wanted to raise some money because he had two sisters who were in foster care, and he wanted to be able to take care of them. During the robbery itself, like you see in the movie, he’s the one who’s willing to die in the bank. But they don\u2019t mention in the movie that he had been incarcerated, and he\u2019d been sexually assaulted in prison a number of times and he was never gonna go back to prison. He had made up his mind that he would rather die than go back. And that wasn\u2019t rhetoric. I strictly believe that was absolute in his mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So learning more about him\u2026 I can never argue against casting John Cazale in any role, because he’s brilliant in this, and he’s brilliant in everything, and he’s perfect in that role in the movie, but the real story is a lot sadder, because he\u2019s a dead-end kid. He\u2019s taking this opportunity because maybe he can get 50 grand out of it, maybe he has to die in a bank. It\u2019s kind of all the same to him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They’re probably both in their 20s in the movie. But looking at it, they have the air of adults, especially Cazale, he feels like the older one in the movie. But knowing he was so young in real life\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the fascinating things I came across is that he had a job at a little candy shop in Brooklyn at the time of the robbery, and he actually called somebody who worked at the candy shop to tell him, \u201cI’m not going to be in to work. I’m on schedule tonight, but I’m not going to make it in because I’m holding hostages in a bank.\u201d That kind of sweet mentality is really heartbreaking when you get into it. So Sal was very fascinating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the character of Liz. Chris Sarandon is in the movie for eight minutes or so, something like that, but an entire book could be written just about her and her place in the early drag scene in New York City. At the time of the robbery, she was probably one of the most famous trans people in the world. It wasn’t a big group, but aside from Christine Jorgensen maybe there were not a lot of other trans people who got their name in the newspapers as trans people. She was one of the reasons why this works as a book, just her personality. There’s a lot of unlikable people here who you’re asked to kind of follow along, but Liz’s personality, her sense of humor, just her attitude towards things is really wonderful, and I think having that presence in the story is really helpful. And just as a person who deserves a little bit of tribute for her role in all this. Because she was doing these things when they didn’t even have agreed upon language to describe what she was doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But she\u2019s also a real tragic figure. A lot of people in here are tragic figures, but getting to know her more really helped with making this a story and making this an engaging read because she\u2019s very much somebody worth knowing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ashley Hatzenbihler<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are so many stories that won’t ever be told, and so many people who won’t see their name out there. This book is another way for Liz’s name to continue to be there, and hopefully people will see something in these people that they may not have gotten to see otherwise because media has changed so much since then, and we’re limited to what we already have from then. Which I’m sure is something you think about often as a librarian.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Matthew Prigge<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, the reason this whole thing was possible is because of journalists, I mentioned Randy Wicker, who I believe is still around, Cliff Jarre, Marty Manford, who not only wrote about this, but saved their papers and gave them to libraries. Randy Wicker, in particular, put his entire archive online. He had this website, it\u2019s very much a throwback to when people had personal websites, here’s all my things, here’s pictures of me and my friends. I love it whenever I can still find one of those. And there’s this little link on it that says Randy Wicker’s archive, and it was just thousands of pages of his notes, of letters, of correspondence he had with John and Carmen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time, every journalist saved all their stuff in a file, but not all of these were maintained or saved after the person passed away. Certainly, it’s very rare that any of them are digitized and available online, or even in an archive somewhere, but because these things survived is why I was able to do this. Without that, none of this would have been possible. Even just the preservation of the newspapers themselves, which is hit and miss in some cases, is kind of an achievement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Liz herself maintained a small archive, a collection of some of her legal documents and photographs and letters with John and other people that are still in a little box in New York City at the LGBT Center there.<\/p>\n\n\n

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NONFICTION<\/strong>
Dog’s Day<\/strong><\/a><\/em>
By Matthew J. Prigge<\/strong>
Counterpoint<\/strong>
Published September 29, 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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Matthew Prigge is an author and librarian at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He has written several books, including Outlaws, Rebels, & Vixens, which was made into a feature-length documentary about film censorship. 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He has written several books, including Outlaws, Rebels, & Vixens, which was made into a feature-length documentary about film censorship. 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Lives of Others: \u201cFlowers and Insects, Some Birds and a Pair of Spiders\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap wp-block-paragraph\">This is an attractive new design for <strong><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/318\/9780571394449\">Flowers and Insects, Some Birds and a Pair of Spiders<\/a><\/em><\/strong>, Ted Hughes\u2019 collection originally published in 1986. It features the same watercolor illustrations by Leonard Baskin, Hughes\u2019 friend and near neighbor in Devon, and adds a sophisticated preface by the nature writer Tim Dee. As Dee explains, the former subtitle has been joined with the title to give the birds and spiders equal billing with the flowers and insects. Each of the sixteen poems records a particular species, usually in movement, flitting, flying, mating, or even just bending in the wind. There are various beauties and ecstasies to be found here, with speculations about nature and her will, and about the intelligence and purpose of her many little denizens. Hughes\u2019 extravagant metaphors, more than metaphors, are metamorphoses: as carefully as he illustrates the actual forms of life, each of them is ready to be turned into something else, to live again, often in human form, and so present us back to ourselves having first appeared as something utterly different from us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The speaker carries his authority in his strident rhythm. The first poem, \u201cNarcissi,\u201d begins thus: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"has-text-color has-link-color has-open-sans-font-family has-custom-font wp-elements-1 wp-block-paragraph\" style=\"color:#444141;font-size:18px;font-family:open-sans\">The Narcissi shiver their stars<br>In the green-gold wind of evening sunglare.<br>Their happiness is weightless.<br>Their merriment is ghostly.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There is a strong hint of Gerard Manley Hopkins in the consonance of \u201cgreen-gold wind\u201d and \u201csunglare,\u201d carried forward into \u201cweightless\u201d and \u201cghostly,\u201d but the forceful parallelism of the third and fourth lines, anything but weightless or ghostly, asserts a different kind of rhetorical confidence. Soon the narcissi are transformed into the \u201claughing children \/ From the 1918 Armistice,\u201d and later to \u201cGhost-lights in the orchard.\u201d They are the dead, now, but they lived for a time in a new bloom of peace. The next poem, \u201cA Violet at Lough Aughrisburg,\u201d gives us a rather diffuse set of images by a lake in Ireland: the tide and the cliffs, the furnace of a sunset, an apple tree, a bronze bullock, milk and blood. The scene is somehow all contained in something it contains, as the flower is imagined as an amulet which \u201cholds it all, a moment, \/ In a rinsed globe of light.\u201d \u201cBrambles,\u201d a fanciful work, begins with jackdaws and \u201cjackdawdom,\u201d the complicated social arrangements of these birds, and then turns casually to consider the brambles, which seem to grow and grope with intelligent life. The cells of bird, plant, and man alike, Hughes decides, are themselves \u201cmute\u201d and unaware of the form they make up, but each contains a \u201cgodlike syntax and vocabulary.\u201d They follow their orders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The scientific view will return, but each living thing will seem to transcend its nature. The ecstatic mayflies of \u201cSaint\u2019s Island,\u201d who in the morning are \u201cPoetic electrons\u201d become like whirling dervishes \u201cTouched by God \/ Drunk with God.\u201d These visions, rendered in the first person plural, come from a memory of sitting in a boat on a Lough which floats \u201canchored in the mirror\u201d on a \u201cskin of shivers.\u201d The poem is dedicated to the Irish painter Barrie Cooke, who presumably shared in all this, but it still records the speaker\u2019s particular observations of the rising mayflies: \u201c(One time I found one had failed. \/ It wallowed in the oil of light.)\u201d The next poem, \u201cWhere I Sit Writing My Letter,\u201d a bit of a dud, is about some excited baby starlings which distract him as he hunches over a desk, one is not sure where exactly. It has an awkward contraction (\u201cProbably the weird aniseed-corpse-odour \/ Of the hawthorn flower\u2019s disturbed them,\u201d) and a jangling assonance when the birds rush off \u201cLeaving me fevered, and addled.\u201d The activity and his response seem ginned up, but a startling line on the starlings follows: \u201cThey can\u2019t believe their wings.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Towards the end, we have the extraordinarily and intimately detailed \u201cEclipse.\u201d As Dee notes in his preface, it is \u201ca work of poetic natural history,\u201d with fewer imaginative excursions than elsewhere in the collection. Through a magnifying glass trained on the lower left corner of a window the speaker studies a spider\u2019s <\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"has-text-color has-link-color has-open-sans-font-family has-custom-font wp-elements-2 wp-block-paragraph\" style=\"color:#464343;font-size:18px;font-family:open-sans\">trophy den of uniforms, reds, greens,<br>Yellow-striped and detached wing-frails, last year\u2019s<br>Leavings, parched a winter, scentless\u2014heads,<br>Bodices, corsets, leg-shells, a crumble of shards<br>In a museum of dust and neglect.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Wing-frails! The speaker seems to have magnified his hearing as well as his sight. The spider, immediately clocked as a female, finds a mate and locks forelegs with him, then they mate. The description is clinical: \u201cI saw her fitting, with accurate whisker-fine feet, \/ Blobs of glue to the fibres.\u201d The spiders stay resolutely spiderlike; in fact they are the most spidery spiders one has ever seen. Their transformation comes only when they have gone off somewhere in the recesses of the window frame, beyond his view. Now, he imagines, they are like human lovers, with arms as well as legs: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"has-text-color has-link-color has-open-sans-font-family has-custom-font wp-elements-3 wp-block-paragraph\" style=\"color:#504e4e;font-size:17px;font-family:open-sans\">They are hidden<br>Probably together in the fusty dark,<br>Holding forearms, listening to the rain, rejoicing<br>As the sun\u2019s edge, behind the clouds,<br>Comes clear of our shadow.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Flowers and insects, some birds and a pair of spiders. The names of the species may evoke myths and dreams, particular places and times of day, but the common nouns have a pleasant plainness. They are ready to be detailed as what they are, but they will be remembered as anything the poet can imagine, such is the emphatic force of this verse. An hour spent with this collection is a reminder of how to profit from giving attention to whatever fascinates.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"500\" height=\"673\" data-attachment-id=\"105115\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/2026\/09\/25\/the-lives-of-others-flowers-and-insects-some-birds-and-a-pair-of-spiders\/attachment\/9780571394449\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9780571394449.jpg?fit=600%2C808&ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"600,808\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"1","alt":""}\" data-image-title=\"9780571394449\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9780571394449.jpg?fit=500%2C673&ssl=1\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" data-src=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9780571394449-500x673.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-105115 lazyload\" style=\"width:350px;height:auto\" data-sizes=\"auto\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9780571394449.jpg?resize=500%2C673&ssl=1 500w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9780571394449.jpg?resize=200%2C269&ssl=1 200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9780571394449.jpg?resize=111%2C150&ssl=1 111w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9780571394449.jpg?resize=370%2C498&ssl=1 370w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9780571394449.jpg?resize=20%2C27&ssl=1 20w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9780571394449.jpg?resize=36%2C48&ssl=1 36w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>POETRY<br><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/318\/9780571394449\">Flowers and Insects, Some Birds and a Pair of Spiders<\/a><\/em><br>By Ted Hughes<br>Faber & Faber<br>September 8, 2026 (originally published 1986)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js\" data-type=\"book_button\" data-affiliate-id=\"318\" data-sku=\"9780571394449\"><\/script>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" data-attachment-id=\"62170\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/2021\/03\/30\/libertie-kaitlyn-greenidge\/chirblogoend-1-1\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/chirblogoend-1-1.png?fit=200%2C200&ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"200,200\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}\" data-image-title=\"chirblogoend-1-1\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/chirblogoend-1-1.png?fit=200%2C200&ssl=1\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" data-src=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/chirblogoend-1-1.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-62170 lazyload\" style=\"width:100px;height:auto\" data-sizes=\"auto\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/chirblogoend-1-1.png?w=200&ssl=1 200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/chirblogoend-1-1.png?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1 150w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/chirblogoend-1-1.png?resize=180%2C180&ssl=1 180w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/chirblogoend-1-1.png?resize=90%2C90&ssl=1 90w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/chirblogoend-1-1.png?resize=20%2C20&ssl=1 20w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/chirblogoend-1-1.png?resize=185%2C185&ssl=1 185w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/chirblogoend-1-1.png?resize=100%2C100&ssl=1 100w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/chirblogoend-1-1.png?resize=48%2C48&ssl=1 48w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our review of Ted Hughes’ newly reissued poetry collection, “Flowers and Insects, Some Birds and a Pair of Spiders”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":199145551,"featured_media":105130,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[309],"tags":[7758706,711769380,422,711769381,711765984,711769379],"thb-sponsors":[],"class_list":["post-104608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-faber-faber","tag-flowers-and-insects-some-birds-and-a-pair-of-spiders","tag-poetry","tag-reissue","tag-reviews","tag-ted-hughes"],"yoast_head":"<!-- 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His reviews have been published by The Adroit Journal, Cleveland Review of Books, The Oxonian Review, and The Millions. 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Maybe a better descriptor than \u201cnovel\u201d would be \u201cillustration,\u201d \u201cfable,\u201d or \u201ccommiseration.\u201d Concrete resolutions are thin on the ground here. Instead, <em>Cloud Six<\/em> underscores the wisdom widely attributed to both Guy Finley and Valery Satterwhite, \u201ceverything is in perfect order whether you understand it or not.\u201d So why waste time trying? Fusselman even uses the structure of the story to make this point, which can be funny or frustrating depending on your outlook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A woman named Mam and her husband Bunko are the ostensible protagonists of this tale. But more than the main characters, they are proxies for the rest of us. Mam is a \u201clearning specialist\u201d at a school in Scottsdale, Arizona; her husband, Bunko, is a computer programmer and occasional pet psychic. Mam\u2019s best friend is more traditionally attractive and has a better-paying job than her. Bunko has a bit of a drinking problem. Both of them have experienced the loss of their parents, and Mam the loss of her previous spouse, the father of her teenaged daughter, Penny. Mam\u2019s father was an abusive alcoholic, which explains her attempts to keep Bunko\u2019s sobriety intact even after they\u2019re both dead. Bunko\u2019s mother died of cancer and he never knew his father. The two have been married for seven years and are now looking for a fresh start in a different part of the country. Sounds familiar, no? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mam and Bunko are drawn broadly enough that any of us can relate to the responsibilities, losses, and daily frustrations they\u2019ve experienced. Fusselman establishes their near-blank-slate relatability so that when they suddenly die (not a spoiler\u2014this is the basis for the story) and are sent to a cut-rate afterlife called Cloud Six, we are already primed to empathize with their desperation for answers. When the two learn about a bodega with a bar at the back where it is possible to see how your living loved ones are getting along without you, Mam and Bunko make it their mission to get there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In an episode of <em>Seinfeld<\/em> called \u201cThe Pitch\u201d, two characters, George and Jerry, pitch an idea to television executives for a show that is \u201cabout nothing\u201d in a meta nod to the show they exist in. This seems to be the framework of <em>Cloud Six<\/em>. Things \u201chappen\u201d in much the same way things happen to us all every day. But no matter what, we always return to a baseline of mundanity after adjusting to the changes we experience, regardless of how unsettling those changes may be at first. A \u201cnew normal\u201d as they say. Similarly, no matter what bizarre thing takes place in this story, the comedically neutral narrative tone and regular dashes of absurdity flatten every spike of strangeness back to level ground. Events are only briefly surprising, especially when a character remarks on why this thing shouldn\u2019t be surprising at all. Whether it\u2019s a shapeshifting demon, a talking baby rabbit named Leroy, a scientist working in a random lab hidden in the all-white landscape, or the Devil himself, someone will remind you that nothing is actually weird, merely unfamiliar until you get used to it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201c\u2018This place is just a confusing mishmash of crazy situations with no direction at all on how to navigate any of it!\u2019 Mam said nothing. That was all true. But it had been true in Scottsdale, too.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Throughout the novel, there are several interjections from people existing outside of the story, like the author and her intern. There are also a total of five introductions, and sixty-two endnotes containing funny notes and clarification on which textual insertions are facts and which were made up for use in this story. Multiple authorial asides include interactions with Satan, and there is also one point where Satan addresses the reader directly, expressing his disapproval of Amy Fusselman setting any part of her story in his realm. He too, like every character we meet, must confront disruptive change. But just as nothing is actually weird, neither is it permanent. No state in the novel is truly final and, through a range of characters with varied power and knowledge\u2013as well as the many introductions, reintroductions, and footnotes that force us to cope with constant change as readers\u2013Fusselman invites us to come to terms with that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For anyone hoping to stick with Mam and Bunko and learn what sets them apart from anyone else we could be reading about, these interruptions may annoy you. Especially because they are written in much the same way as the story of Mam and Bunko. In other words, Fusselman maintains the same narrative distance between the reader and every single character, including the fictional version of herself. An intense deep-dive into each character\u2019s psychology as they complete their journey is not the point of this novel. Mam and Bunko\u2019s sojourn to the bodega isn\u2019t the point of this novel. Nor is their daughter Penny\u2019s reckoning with the loss of her parents, or Mam\u2019s younger brother Bill reckoning with his own grief and new status as Penny\u2019s guardian. Everything is given the same weight, resulting in a hall of mirrors where you might find yourself bumping into what you believe is the way through the story only to find it\u2019s a dead end. Engaging with <em>Cloud Six<\/em> requires shedding any expectations you might have about how a novel should unfold and what you should be left with in the end. Just as Mam and Bunko must learn to shed their expectations of the afterlife, and fictional Amy Fusselman must learn to shed her expectations of daily life, plants, and Hell.     <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This novel probably won\u2019t devastate or elate you. It won\u2019t even ask you to ruminate for very long on the facts or ideas presented, or to sit with the emotions that would typically attend the story\u2019s events. The considerations of <em>Cloud Six<\/em> are expansive enough to become almost meaningless, which feels purposeful, as if Fusselman wants us to think about the concept of meaning stripped of all its usual rules. The “meaning” of <em>Cloud Six<\/em> is as wispy as its namesake, leaving you with as much or as little to chew on as you\u2019d like while you wait for whatever comes next to begin.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"500\" height=\"750\" data-attachment-id=\"105097\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/2026\/09\/24\/cloud-six\/9781646223480-2\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9781646223480.webp?fit=600%2C900&ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"600,900\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0","alt":""}\" data-image-title=\"9781646223480\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9781646223480.webp?fit=500%2C750&ssl=1\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" data-src=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9781646223480-500x750.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-105097 lazyload\" style=\"width:350px;height:auto\" data-sizes=\"auto\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9781646223480.webp?resize=500%2C750&ssl=1 500w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9781646223480.webp?resize=200%2C300&ssl=1 200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9781646223480.webp?resize=100%2C150&ssl=1 100w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9781646223480.webp?resize=370%2C555&ssl=1 370w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9781646223480.webp?resize=20%2C30&ssl=1 20w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9781646223480.webp?resize=32%2C48&ssl=1 32w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>FICTION<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/318\/9781646223480\">Cloud Six<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>by Amy Fusselman<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Catapult<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Published on September 22, 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" data-attachment-id=\"68356\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/2021\/12\/22\/crime-reading-pays-in-thrills-and-chills\/chirblogoend-1-2-4\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?fit=200%2C200&ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"200,200\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}\" data-image-title=\"chirblogoend-1-2\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?fit=200%2C200&ssl=1\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" data-src=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-68356 lazyload\" style=\"width:50px;height:auto\" data-sizes=\"auto\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?w=200&ssl=1 200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1 150w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?resize=180%2C180&ssl=1 180w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?resize=90%2C90&ssl=1 90w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?resize=20%2C20&ssl=1 20w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?resize=185%2C185&ssl=1 185w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?resize=100%2C100&ssl=1 100w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?resize=48%2C48&ssl=1 48w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our review of Amy Fusselman’s new novel, “Cloud Six.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":199145476,"featured_media":105095,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[309],"tags":[711769347,1340207,711769378,1747],"thb-sponsors":[],"class_list":["post-104862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-amy-fusselman","tag-catapult","tag-cloud-six","tag-fiction"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>A Philosophical Hall of Mirrors in "Cloud Six" - Chicago Review of Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/2026\/09\/24\/cloud-six\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Philosophical Hall of Mirrors in "Cloud Six" - Chicago Review of Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Our review of Amy Fusselman's new novel, "Cloud Six."\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/2026\/09\/24\/cloud-six\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Chicago Review of Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-09-24T10:00:00+00:00\" 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In other words, I can only recommend perspective and distance.\u201d As a well-known dissident who served multiple prison terms, Havel had intimate knowledge of the need for comedic release in difficult times. This ethos can be seen in the literary work of writers like Milan Kundera and Ivan Kl\u00edma, and the films of Milo\u0161 Forman and V\u011bra Chytilov\u00e1; all found ways to satirically skirt their Communist oppressors. Now with the publication of Radka Denemarkov\u00e1\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/318\/9781566897662\"><em>A Contribution to the History of Joy<\/em><\/a> \u2013 the first of the author\u2019s four novels to appear in English \u2013 we can see how this legacy of spirited rebellion continues on in so-called \u201cfreer\u201d times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The topics that Denemarkov\u00e1 is addressing aren\u2019t remotely humorous: sexual assault, the exploitation of minors, the lingering trauma of war. And while it wouldn\u2019t be accurate to say the novel is full of laughs, it has a decidedly tilted perspective that literalizes the distance of which Havel spoke. From the start, Denemarkov\u00e1 adopts a bird\u2019s-eye view that considers the human world \u201cfiendishly simple.\u201d Swallows, a species whose migratory patterns symbolize seasonality and resilience, are particularly prevalent. Because of the long distances they travel, they can also be seen as good omens, though it\u2019s unlikely that any of Denemarkov\u00e1\u2019s protagonists would consider themselves lucky. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The first we meet is identified simply as the Detective. He\u2019s been called in to close the books on what appears to be a straightforward suicide case: a middle-aged businessman has been found hanged in his attic. His young Widow (capitalized in the text) insists that he wasn\u2019t the type to take his own life and the Detective, acting on both a \u201ctingling in his guts\u201d and a burgeoning attraction to the Widow, initiates his own investigation. The businessman, he soon discovers, was accused of misconduct by several of his secretaries. He was also in the midst of writing a fictional account of his own life story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The novel then jumps to a parallel narrative of three elderly women who live together in a house near Pet\u0159\u00edn Hill and have recently traveled to London. There\u2019s Erika, a filmmaker; Diana, a yoga instructor; and Birgit, a creative writing teacher. They are clearly on some sort of case of their own, but its significance remains clouded. They follow a girl into a restaurant and steal the passport of the owner. Later, they lure this same girl to a yoga class and extract a confession from her: after suffering a brutal rape, she’s become ensnared in a human trafficking ring that\u2019s run through the restaurant. She doesn\u2019t seem to want their help, but they may force it on her anyway. Are these women protectors or predators? How much difference is there between the two, really?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Eventually, the two strands begin to intertwine: the Detective, following a tip that the businessman was once a student of Birgit\u2019s, breaks into the Pet\u0159\u00edn house. In their attic he discovers a kind of archive: a vast trove of images, transcripts, and papers that meticulously document repeated crimes of sexual assault and abuse from World War II onward. \u201cThese bodies,\u201d Denemarkov\u00e1 writes, \u201chave been trampled on by the tanks of one vast army, the global army of men.\u201d Repulsed, the Detective flees from the house, but he can\u2019t shake his growing suspicions that the women may be in league together, and are intent on carrying out a misandrist mission. But Denemarkov\u00e1 has some tricks up her sleeve as she cinches these characters closer together, offering readers a metatextual mystery that unfolds a little like if Borges got lost in the files of Andrea Dworkin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There are some other predecessors to whom Denemarkov\u00e1 is indebted. The ways she\u2019s riffing on crime fiction recall novels like Olga Tokarczuk\u2019s <em>Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead<\/em> and Cristina Rivera Garza\u2019s <em>Death Takes Me<\/em>, which also follow older female protagonists reckoning with histories of violence. But Denemarkov\u00e1\u2019s off-kilter approach is steadfastly her own, couched as it is in the belief that \u201c[l]anguage prevents us from articulating the truth, even when it doesn\u2019t lie.\u201d Readers hoping for definitive solutions will likely be frustrated by the swerves that the author takes, but for those willing to suspend their genre expectations, there are many rewards to be found here. Not every flight of imagination works, but there\u2019s something refreshing about the novel\u2019s looseness when so many other books can feel calculated in their approach to plot, risking little so as not to be too disagreeable to the masses. This is the sort of work that wants readers to sit with their discomfort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Denemarkov\u00e1\u2019s prose, poetically rendered by translators Julia and Peter Sherwood, depicts a society of citizens that are hopelessly alienated from their physical selves. Bodies, particularly those of women, move through spaces as if acted upon by them. The novel was first published in her native language in 2014; while lags in English translations aren\u2019t uncommon, it is striking to read <em>Contribution<\/em> now in the wake of the #MeToo movement, when its impact and legacy have come into question. Though it brought down several notable predators, it\u2019s also fair to say that public scrutiny of men\u2019s bad behavior hasn\u2019t improved it overall. Epstein\u2019s clients have largely avoided consequences. Vulnerable groups must remain vigilant. That doesn\u2019t make the novel dated; in fact, it only feels more urgent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Which brings us back to Havel\u2019s message of \u201csee[ing] things in their ridiculous and absurd dimensions.\u201d If language can\u2019t bring us any closer to the truth then what good is confession, for the victim or perpetrator? How do we account for our own complicity in the world\u2019s horrors? What distance can we hope to achieve if our bodies continue to carry their burdens through generations? Certainly, Denemarkov\u00e1\u2019s provocative novel suggests, we\u2019ll never get as much perspective as the birds, who are descended from dinosaurs, after all, and have had centuries to make up their minds about us. Yet they keep returning, and we must, too. Such persistence is, perhaps, our own way of ensuring these stories aren\u2019t lost to history.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"500\" height=\"773\" data-attachment-id=\"105057\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/2026\/09\/23\/in-a-contribution-to-the-history-of-joy-the-birds-keep-the-score\/image-102\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image-1.jpeg?fit=600%2C928&ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"600,928\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0","alt":""}\" data-image-title=\"image\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image-1.jpeg?fit=500%2C773&ssl=1\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" data-src=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image-1-500x773.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-105057 lazyload\" style=\"aspect-ratio:0.645367412140575;object-fit:cover;width:350px;height:auto\" data-sizes=\"auto\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image-1.jpeg?resize=500%2C773&ssl=1 500w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image-1.jpeg?resize=194%2C300&ssl=1 194w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image-1.jpeg?resize=97%2C150&ssl=1 97w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image-1.jpeg?resize=370%2C572&ssl=1 370w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image-1.jpeg?resize=20%2C31&ssl=1 20w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image-1.jpeg?resize=31%2C48&ssl=1 31w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>FICTION<br><\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/318\/9781566897662\"><strong><em>A Contribution to the History of Joy<\/em><br><\/strong><\/a><strong>By Radka Denemarkov\u00e1<\/strong><br><strong>Translated by Julia and Peter Sherwood<br>Coffee House Press<br>Published September 22, 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" data-attachment-id=\"68356\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/2021\/12\/22\/crime-reading-pays-in-thrills-and-chills\/chirblogoend-1-2-4\/\" 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data-srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?w=200&ssl=1 200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1 150w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?resize=180%2C180&ssl=1 180w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?resize=90%2C90&ssl=1 90w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?resize=20%2C20&ssl=1 20w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?resize=185%2C185&ssl=1 185w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?resize=100%2C100&ssl=1 100w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?resize=48%2C48&ssl=1 48w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 1999, upon receiving the Open Society Prize, then-Czech Republic President V\u00e1clav Havel gave a speech entitled The Last Laugh. \u201cThe only thing I can recommend at this stage is a sense of humor,\u201d he said. \u201cAn ability to see things in their ridiculous and absurd dimensions, to laugh at others and at ourselves, a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":174619380,"featured_media":105033,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[309],"tags":[2501560,1747,711769377,1745,8349],"thb-sponsors":[],"class_list":["post-104707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-coffee-house-press","tag-fiction","tag-radka-denemarkova","tag-review","tag-translation"],"yoast_head":"<!-- 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humor,\u201d he said. \u201cAn ability to see things in their ridiculous and absurd dimensions, to laugh at others and at ourselves, a…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/2026\/09\/23\/in-a-contribution-to-the-history-of-joy-the-birds-keep-the-score\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Chicago Review of Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-09-23T10:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/0-3.jpg?fit=1920%2C675&ssl=1\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1920\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"675\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Sara Batkie\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ChicagoRevBooks\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" 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Her stories have been published in various journals, honored with a 2017 Pushcart Prize, and twice received Notable Story citations in the Best American Short Stories anthology series. She also writes a monthly Substack called The Pink Stuff. 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Wade<\/em> was overturned in 2022. “What would states do if they lost all their obstetricians?” she asks on the latest episode of Book Stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What if states created laws around pregnancy and healthcare, especially medically needed abortions, that forced OB\/GYNs to leave certain states? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Naomi then imagined those living in those OB-less states could drum up a solution: if you don’t have a doctor, kidnap one \u2014 <em>Obstetrix <\/em>was born.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is what happens to Liz, the main character, who is an obstetrician escaping a state where she was acquitted for performing the last abortion. In a high need for a gig, she falls into a trap and kidnapped into a fundamentalist group who live on a rural compound in the west. The group needs someone to deliver babies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But some of the women turn out to, unfortunately, be just teenage girls, showing Liz just how fundamental the cult is. Books are banned, internet is restricted, movement is controlled, men are armed. Liz is the only medically trained person present, and is soon asked to go beyond her specific OB abilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This light-footed thriller sits at just-over 200 pages. It barely pushes the sci-fi button because of the possibility of its reality occurring: you’ll recognize this world more clearly than Republic of Gilead. I would almost classify this work as law-fi or med-fi that sends jostles your vertebrates due obsessive legal (and literal) atmosphere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Liz finds comfort in stories. In memorized sections; imagined stories; remixed stories; and a book hid in a toilet tank. She gives this gift of escape \u2014 a connection to the outside world \u2014 to a younger character who grew up in this oppressive cult without the language for such stories. Naomi told me it’s a theme of her work: that words matter. They can change how a person feels about a day or their life. You need to find a way to believe your words matter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">(Naomi <a href=\"https:\/\/naomikritzer.com\/2026\/02\/07\/my-2025-wiscon-guest-off-honor-speech\/\">gave a speech<\/a> about this at WisCon in 2025. She also provides frequent information <a href=\"https:\/\/naomikritzer.com\/\">about local political races<\/a> and political news in Minnesota on her website). <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For the duration of this episode, we dug into the details of the book, Naomi’s inspirations for the characters and plot, and the importance of obstetricians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Enjoy this episode on the <a href=\"https:\/\/thebookstuffpodcast.libsyn.com\/?_gl=1*ome4tu*_gcl_aw*R0NMLjE3ODUzMzM3ODguQ2p3S0NBandwY1ROQmhBNUVpd0FkTzFTOXEwY2JUckFlakpQalhIYkJwcXlIMkNVdy1NalZ6X1pTUks5NFVDajVaTVBEaVZ0OW41ZXR4b0NaSU1RQXZEX0J3RQ\">Book Stuff website<\/a> and on <a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/book-stuff\/id1896920189\">Apple<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/033xj8816TdeeANnmSQm8U\">Spotify.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Stay curious, keep reading.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" data-attachment-id=\"68356\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/2021\/12\/22\/crime-reading-pays-in-thrills-and-chills\/chirblogoend-1-2-4\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?fit=200%2C200&ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"200,200\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}\" data-image-title=\"chirblogoend-1-2\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?fit=200%2C200&ssl=1\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" data-src=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-68356 lazyload\" style=\"width:100px;height:auto\" data-sizes=\"auto\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?w=200&ssl=1 200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1 150w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?resize=180%2C180&ssl=1 180w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?resize=90%2C90&ssl=1 90w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?resize=20%2C20&ssl=1 20w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?resize=185%2C185&ssl=1 185w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?resize=100%2C100&ssl=1 100w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?resize=48%2C48&ssl=1 48w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Minnesota-based and Hugo award-winning writer Naomi Kritzer started thinking about her latest book, Obstetrix, when Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. “What would states do if they lost all their obstetricians?” she asks on the latest episode of Book Stuff. What if states created laws around pregnancy and healthcare, especially medically needed abortions, that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":199145717,"featured_media":104353,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[831,2060],"tags":[711769195,11788,711769369,711769370,711765987],"thb-sponsors":[],"class_list":["post-105001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews","category-podcasts","tag-book-stuff","tag-interview","tag-naomi-kritzer","tag-obstetrix","tag-podcasts"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Book Stuff: Sci-fi writer Naomi Kritzer on a future without OBs - Chicago Review of Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/2026\/09\/22\/book-stuff-sci-fi-writer-naomi-kritzer-on-a-future-without-obs\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Book Stuff: Sci-fi writer Naomi Kritzer on a future without OBs - Chicago Review of Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Minnesota-based and Hugo award-winning writer Naomi Kritzer started thinking about her latest book, Obstetrix, when Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. “What would states do if they lost all their obstetricians?” she asks on the latest episode of Book Stuff. 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Madeleine Moss\u2019s novel<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/318\/9781685970857\">Mistranslation<\/a> <em>publishes September 22 with The University of Iowa Press. Alexia Nader\u2019s novel<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/318\/9781685970833\">The Meaning of Daughter<\/a> <em>publishes September 15 also with the University of Iowa Press.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Alexia on Madeleine\u2019s novel:<\/strong> This summer, I found myself free from my caretaking responsibilities of two young children for one week and I spent three mornings of this time in a hotel room bingeing Madeleine Moss\u2019s debut novel <em>Mistranslation<\/em>. The bingeing had to do with not wanting to leave a certain reading state I often inhabited as a little girl. There I was again under the covers with a thick novel, a little yellow light, and a longing, not just to be transported to a bigger world, but also to be immersed in a large, surprising intelligence about that world. <em>Mistranslation<\/em> delivered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Staring at the blank space under the novel\u2019s last line, I immediately began to miss its third person narrative voice, gossipy and sharp (like my favorite 19th century novels), illuminating the lives of Sabina, Camilla and Khalil, twin sisters and their neighbor, whom we follow from the time they are nine until early adulthood. This authoritative third-person voice intertwines with the first-person auto-fictional voice of Violet, the twins\u2019 mother. Violet\u2019s voice is vulnerable, humble, and full of anguish, but also with a resistant spirit. The interplay between the two voices made me curious to speak about what can be expressed through structure with Madeleine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Madeleine on Alexia\u2019s novel:<\/strong> Although we\u2019ve never met, Alexia and I share both a literary agency and a publisher, so reading each other\u2019s work in order to pitch something together was an easy choice. I hoped I would like her novel and worried about what I would do if I didn\u2019t. However, from the first page of <em>The Meaning of Daughter<\/em>, I was taken with the precision and subtlety of the first-person narration. This narrator is Merjan, who as a child has to leave her home country of Lebanon to immigrate to Haiti with her family. Both countries are described in evocative detail: at times nostalgic, at times alienating. Yet it\u2019s when <em>The Meaning of Daughter<\/em> stunningly switches points of view a third of the way in\u2014moving across decades and continents to introduce us to Merjan\u2019s grown daughter, Yvonne\u2014that I realized how ambitious the novel is, too. In total, the book comprises three sections: the first narrated by Merjan, the second by her daughter, Yvonne, and the third by her daughter, Eva, which together paint a fraught picture of ambition and maternal ambivalence. It\u2019s a stunning novel with a wholly original structure, and I\u2019m so glad I get to talk with Alexia about it.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\" data-attachment-id=\"68342\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/2021\/12\/22\/crime-reading-pays-in-thrills-and-chills\/testowl-6\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/testowl.png?fit=100%2C100&ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"100,100\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}\" data-image-title=\"testowl\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/testowl.png?fit=100%2C100&ssl=1\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" data-src=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/testowl.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-68342 lazyload\" style=\"width:50px;height:auto\" data-sizes=\"auto\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/testowl.png?w=100&ssl=1 100w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/testowl.png?resize=90%2C90&ssl=1 90w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/testowl.png?resize=20%2C20&ssl=1 20w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/testowl.png?resize=48%2C48&ssl=1 48w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 100px) 100vw, 100px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Alexia Nader<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Mistranslation<\/em> is divided into two voices, the work-in-progress written by the mother character, Violet, and the third-person narration of the other characters (including Violet). Which part came first?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Madeleine Moss<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"> I believe the initial idea was around the twin sisters, but the actual writing of Violet\u2019s section came first. This was years ago: I was in my mid-twenties and going through a difficult time\u2014somewhat miserable during a year in France, then very miserable in an MFA program in the U.S.\u2014and I kept fantasizing about having a baby to escape my problems or at least to create new problems for myself. And at the same time, I\u2019d always believed I didn\u2019t want kids, so there was something destructive and not entirely serious about this idea. It made me think about a woman getting pregnant when she\u2019s \u201ctoo young\u201d or not ready to do so, and the issues it would create for her. But actually, while I\u2019d begun writing from Violet\u2019s point of view, I kept restarting her section, so at some point I switched to the third person that narrates most of the novel and that follows her twin daughters, and I only came back to her \u201cwork in progress\u201d much later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Alexia Nader<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">How did developing the third person section about her daughters influence how you revised or moved forward with Violet\u2019s work-in-progress after you returned to it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Madeleine Moss<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When I started writing from Violet\u2019s point of view, she said and thought a lot of things that were more or less \u201cme.\u201d But when I started writing from the point of view of her daughters, Violet became closer to my own mother: someone who was creative but stifled and who was emotionally rather absent. I spent a lot of the novel trying to make the character of Violet make sense to me\u2014probably in a manner similar to how I was trying to understand my own mother, with whom I share a number of characteristics yet had a complicated relationship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Alexia Nader<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Your story covers a relatively large span of time in the characters\u2019 lives. How do you think about leaps in time in a story?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Madeleine Moss<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As might be apparent, I love a good time jump! My favorite moment in perhaps all of fiction is the time jump that takes place after Isabel\u2019s marriage in <em>The Portrait of a Lady<\/em>. With that jump, the relationships are redrawn and we come back to the same characters but immediately understand that things are different; I think it\u2019s such a brilliant way to infuse a story with fresh energy. For <em>Mistranslation<\/em>, I tried to include time jumps in places where the relationships between the characters were about to be redrawn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Speaking of time jumps and points of view, your novel, <em>The Meaning of Daughter<\/em>, is told in three sections. What inspired you to use this structure? How did you differentiate the three women\u2019s voices?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Alexia Nader<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I had all the characters\u2019 voices in my head almost from the beginning, in a rough sense anyway, and from the very first draft wrote the voices in separate sections. I\u2019m glad the voices sounded at least somewhat different to you! My goal wasn\u2019t to differentiate them completely \u2014 mostly because I think that\u2019s impossible, but also because I wanted the voices to feel influenced by each other. I wanted to develop different textures for each of the voices while getting the reader so immersed in their unique viewpoints that the sections feel separate enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One important way I created different textures to their voices was by using really different literary influences for each section and immersing myself in that reading only while drafting. For Merjan\u2019s section, some of the things I read were the Old Testament, a book called <em>Pearls on a Branch: Oral Tales<\/em> which collects folktales from Lebanon and Syria from women storytellers, <em>The Lover<\/em> by Marguerite Duras, several works by Herta M\u00fcller and Clarice Lispector. For Yvonne\u2019s section the influences were more contemporary (with the exception of M\u00fcller), <em>Lucy<\/em> by Jamaica Kincaid and Hilton Als\u2019 <em>The Women<\/em>, for example. For Eva\u2019s section, I reread <em>The Lost Daughter<\/em> by Elena Ferrante (it\u2019s one of my favorite books) and Jessica Au\u2019s <em>Cold Enough for Snow.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What works influenced your voices? I\u2019m particularly curious about what influenced the third-person narration as I remember remarking as I read that you often capture the spirit of some of the 19th century literature mentioned by the characters in your novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Madeleine Moss<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While I\u2019m obviously not claiming to be on the level of the writers I\u2019m about to cite, I was a big reader of \u201cthe Western canon\u201d when I was younger, and that influenced my writing or at least what I was attempting to do. George Eliot was hugely influential, as was Henry James. The character of Bryn\u2014I don\u2019t want to give any spoilers, but an important side character\u2014is more or less straight out of a Henry James novel; her exhortation to one of the main characters to \u201chelp\u201d someone else is characteristic of many James meddlers. And <em>Middlemarch<\/em> was a big inspiration. At the same time, most of the Western canon is male (and white), of course, and I used the maleness in particular as something that was perhaps stifling book-loving Violet. She crucially never reads Eliot!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Let\u2019s go back to time jumps, though. Between the three sections of <em>The Meaning of Daughter,<\/em> the reader has to be attuned to what\u2019s been left out in order to fully grasp these relationships; one notable example is the ways in which Merjan has been a \u201cbad mother.\u201d The first section ends when Merjan hasn\u2019t yet had Yvonne, while the second section picks up with adult Yvonne\u2019s bitterness toward her mother. What made you place the section breaks here and what else do you want readers to pick up on in the spaces between sections?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Alexia Nader<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I have to be honest: there wasn\u2019t a lot of planning around that section break. I just got to a point in Merjan\u2019s story where I felt there should be a rest and then I put it aside and started Yvonne\u2019s story where it started. When I looked at them together later on, the gap made sense and pleased me. I got good advice when I was starting this novel: listen to the voice and just write, structure intuitively, then tinker with the structure when you have most of the material down and can take a step back and look at what your subconscious has given you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There aren\u2019t specific things I want the reader to pick up on between sections, but I hope that I\u2019ve evoked each character clearly enough so that the reader has what she needs to imagine her version of what\u2019s in those gaps between sections. So for example, hopefully the reader can imagine what Merjan was like as a mother given all that we know about her own upbringing, strengths and shortcomings. Then she can set that against Yvonne\u2019s take on her childhood and her mother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Madeleine Moss<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think we made similar choices in this regard! Okay, all three sections in your novel have first-person narrators, but the middle section also has Yvonne\u2019s mother, Merjan, addressed as \u201cyou\u201d throughout. Why this formally inventive choice?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Alexia Nader<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You know the \u201cyou\u201d voice in Yvonne\u2019s section was pretty polarizing with my early readers. Some people thought it was really strong; other people thought that the section should just be in first person. The reason I kept it in was that I think it helps the reader experience something important about Yvonne and her estrangement. The \u201cyou\u201d helps the reader feel that there is always a Merjan, as a kind of ghostly figure or unanswered voice, in Yvonne\u2019s head. She\u2019s never been able to push her mother away completely despite her hurt and her need for individuality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Madeleine Moss<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This leads me to ask: What is your relationship to your own mother like? And what\u2019s your relationship to being a mother yourself?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Alexia Nader<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I have a great relationship with my mother but I have to say that I\u2019ve always been curious about her life before I was born and when I was very little. She went to medical school at a very young age and soon after she graduated, in her early twenties, she had my older brother. She stopped working as a doctor when I was young to become a stay-at-home parent. I\u2019ve always been curious about the story around this decision from her perspective. I became especially curious about it when I became a mother, as I struggled through the pandemic to write this novel while taking care of my son. And actually for a good portion of this time, my mother was living with me! But it\u2019s just one of those things that\u2019s hard for us to talk about and especially so during the chaos of taking care of a newborn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So anyway, <em>The Meaning of Daughter<\/em>, explores the cultural context of my father\u2019s side of the family, my Lebanese-Haitian side, but that longing that I\u2019ve had to understand my mother as a young woman, and a young mother, as I myself became a mother, was an important source for many of the novel\u2019s inquiries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think that often novels are structured to ask questions that their authors are asking as they write. Do you think this was the case with <em>Mistranslation<\/em> and if so what was the question or set of questions?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Madeleine Moss<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You know, my mom was also a stay-at-home mom, although she had mixed feelings about that role. To answer you, then, I think the central question in <em>Mistranslation<\/em> is around how much you\u2019re supposed to sacrifice for your family. It\u2019s a question that the twins face as teenagers and adults\u2014to what extent is their bond supposed to come before other things they want?\u2014and of course it\u2019s a question for Violet, in terms of what she owes her daughters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What\u2019s funny is that, although I\u2019d already identified similarities in our work, it\u2019s in doing this interview that I\u2019ve realized just how much our novels have in common, because it seems like the question of sacrifice is one of the central topics of <em>The Meaning of Daughter<\/em>, too! All of which begs the question: Should people be pairing our novels together for their next book club?<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"500\" height=\"773\" data-attachment-id=\"105042\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/2026\/09\/22\/multiple-voices-madeleine-moss-and-alexia-nader-discuss-their-new-novels-mistranslation-and-the-meaning-of-daughter\/mistranslation\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/mistranslation.jpg?fit=600%2C928&ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"600,928\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"1","alt":""}\" data-image-title=\"mistranslation\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/mistranslation.jpg?fit=500%2C773&ssl=1\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" data-src=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/mistranslation-500x773.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-105042 lazyload\" style=\"width:250px;height:auto\" data-sizes=\"auto\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/mistranslation.jpg?resize=500%2C773&ssl=1 500w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/mistranslation.jpg?resize=194%2C300&ssl=1 194w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/mistranslation.jpg?resize=97%2C150&ssl=1 97w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/mistranslation.jpg?resize=370%2C572&ssl=1 370w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/mistranslation.jpg?resize=20%2C31&ssl=1 20w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/mistranslation.jpg?resize=31%2C48&ssl=1 31w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>FICTION<\/strong><br><strong><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/318\/9781685970857\">Mistranslation<\/a><\/em><\/strong><br><strong>By<\/strong> <strong>Madeleine Moss<\/strong><br><strong>University of Iowa Press<\/strong><br><strong>Published September 22, 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js\" data-type=\"book_button\" data-affiliate-id=\"318\" data-sku=\"9781685970857\"><\/script>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"500\" height=\"773\" data-attachment-id=\"105045\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/2026\/09\/22\/multiple-voices-madeleine-moss-and-alexia-nader-discuss-their-new-novels-mistranslation-and-the-meaning-of-daughter\/the-meaning-of-daughter\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/the-meaning-of-daughter.jpg?fit=600%2C928&ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"600,928\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"1","alt":""}\" data-image-title=\"the meaning of daughter\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/the-meaning-of-daughter.jpg?fit=500%2C773&ssl=1\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" data-src=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/the-meaning-of-daughter-500x773.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-105045 lazyload\" style=\"width:250px;height:auto\" data-sizes=\"auto\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/the-meaning-of-daughter.jpg?resize=500%2C773&ssl=1 500w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/the-meaning-of-daughter.jpg?resize=194%2C300&ssl=1 194w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/the-meaning-of-daughter.jpg?resize=97%2C150&ssl=1 97w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/the-meaning-of-daughter.jpg?resize=370%2C572&ssl=1 370w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/the-meaning-of-daughter.jpg?resize=20%2C31&ssl=1 20w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/the-meaning-of-daughter.jpg?resize=31%2C48&ssl=1 31w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>FICTION<\/strong><br><strong><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/318\/9781685970833\">The Meaning of Daughter<\/a><\/em><\/strong><br><strong>By<\/strong> <strong>Alexia Nader<\/strong><br><strong>University of Iowa Press<\/strong><br><strong>Published September 15, 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js\" data-type=\"book_button\" data-affiliate-id=\"318\" data-sku=\"9781685970833\"><\/script>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" data-attachment-id=\"68356\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/2021\/12\/22\/crime-reading-pays-in-thrills-and-chills\/chirblogoend-1-2-4\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?fit=200%2C200&ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"200,200\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}\" data-image-title=\"chirblogoend-1-2\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?fit=200%2C200&ssl=1\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" data-src=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-68356 lazyload\" style=\"width:150px;height:auto\" data-sizes=\"auto\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?w=200&ssl=1 200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1 150w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?resize=180%2C180&ssl=1 180w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?resize=90%2C90&ssl=1 90w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?resize=20%2C20&ssl=1 20w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?resize=185%2C185&ssl=1 185w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?resize=100%2C100&ssl=1 100w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?resize=48%2C48&ssl=1 48w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Editor\u2019s note: What follows is a special feature in which two authors interview each other about their work. Madeleine Moss\u2019s novel Mistranslation publishes September 22 with The University of Iowa Press. Alexia Nader\u2019s novel The Meaning of Daughter publishes September 15 also with the University of Iowa Press. 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Her debut novel, Mistranslation, is forthcoming from the University of Iowa Press in September 2026.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.madeleinemoss.com"],"url":"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/author\/mcm333d0a194134d\/"}]}},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p75tvT-rcy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/MadelieneMossAlexiaNader_1920x675.jpg?fit=1920%2C675&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/199145735"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104566"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105054,"href":"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104566\/revisions\/105054"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104566"},{"taxonomy":"thb-sponsors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thb-sponsors?post=104566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":104383,"date":"2026-09-21T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/?p=104383"},"modified":"2026-09-20T14:14:51","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T19:14:51","slug":"michael-gorra-the-storytellers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/2026\/09\/21\/michael-gorra-the-storytellers\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tale Becomes the Story: Michael Gorra’s \u201cThe Storytellers\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"is-style-default wp-block-paragraph\">The 19th-century tale is an altogether different beast than the modern literary short story\u2014different in subject matter and purpose, in style and structure. And yet the tale is the story’s ancestor. Michael Gorra’s highly readable work of literary history and criticism, <em><strong><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/318\/9780226825557\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Storytellers<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/em>, seeks to explain the relationship between these two literary forms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"is-style-default wp-block-paragraph\">First Gorra sets up the alien unity of the 19th-century tale. The point of the tale was not to illustrate a personality or social type; it was to share an unusual event, as one does in a group of friends regaling each other with gossip, and then to discuss it. Writers back then often relied on frame stories, and the characters in their frame stories would comment on the narratives they shared with each other. The tale did not insist upon realism, but it did insist upon closure. Ghosts, insanity, crime, and adventure were common. By contrast, in modern times, such themes have been cast out of literary fiction and consigned to genre fiction; the standard theme has become everyday life realistically portrayed; and internal commentary has been rejected in favor of purposeful ambiguity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"is-style-default wp-block-paragraph\">Most of Gorra’s book is devoted to key turning points in the transition from one kind of fiction to the other. There’s Poe’s theory about unity of effect: the idea that short fiction ought to add up to a single specific sensation received in one sitting. This theory gives short fiction a more integral reason to be short, but it also “sacrifices the kind of multivocal story. . . . in which competing narrators and tonal registers might share the same page.” In other words, Poe killed the frame story. Another example of a key turning point would be Ivan Turgenev’s <em>Sketches from a Hunter’s Album<\/em>. His innovation was to write fictions that did not seek to dramatize the unusual but to portray typical events. Maupassant called Turgenev’s tales “slices of life,” a now-famous phrase. Eventually, through many waypoints like these, Gorra brings us to Chekhov. In Chekhov, the familiar elements of the modern literary short story first cohere in one body of work: his fictions are realistic, everyday, character-focused, and they climax in epiphanies rather than twists or explanations. After Chekhov, the tale had become the short story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Considering the erudite and complicated argument Gorra makes in\u00a0<em>The Storytellers<\/em>\u2014which I have only sketched, scanting a hundred details and steps of evolution\u2014the book is remarkably readable. It’s composed of short, numbered sections, each focusing upon one idea or tale. Gorra’s paraphrases are a delight to read in their own right, and they are a powerful advertisement for his source texts. This book will send its readers back to Poe, Maupassant, and Turgenev\u2014and also to mostly forgotten writers like Sarah Orne Jewett, Charles W. Chesnutt, and Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The only problem with Gorra’s argument is his attitude to 20th-century genre fiction. As he rightly notes, many of the thematic contents of the 19th-century tale made their way into genre fiction. But Gorra betrays a prejudice. At one point he defines literary stories in contrast to genre stories this way: literary stories are “stories that [are] not replicable, not conventional, not done in series, a fiction in which each story is in theory unique and entire unto itself, as unique as the people who read them.” This is surprisingly inaccurate. Modern literary short stories have plenty of replication and convention, and they are sometimes written in series; meanwhile, many great works of genre fiction are unique and stand alone, and both kinds of story are read by unique people. This prejudice is odd in light of passages like the following, which could just as easily be mourning the exclusion of genre from the world of literary fiction as the loss to that world of the 19th-century tale:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What’s lost [in 20th-century literary fiction] is the madness and the fantasy, the elaborate and polyvocal framing and the sheer range of formal invention, the case histories and the horror, the shockingly extreme effects, the sense of the peculiar and the unprecedented, the mysteries around the corner, the tales that come from far away, and perhaps also the magic of storytelling itself, of a voice that speaks in the dark and asks us to believe.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ultimately the world of 19th-century tale that this book mourns was never truly lost, but socially bifurcated by market segmentation between the literary fiction to which it gave birth and the genre fiction that continued its mainstream traditions. This separation is now, in the 21st century, itself eroding. That the “19th-century synthesis” appeared to be lost is more a social problem than a literary one\u2014it speaks to the self-isolation of groups of writers and readers from each other. It should now be much easier to see the post-Chekhovian literary short story as a new genre that sprang into being in the 20th century\u2014beautiful and elegant, but part of a panoply and not its replacement. Gorra’s book should be taken as a call for us to continue reintegrating the worlds of short fiction.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"500\" height=\"755\" data-attachment-id=\"105023\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/2026\/09\/21\/michael-gorra-the-storytellers\/image-101\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image-1.png?fit=600%2C906&ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"600,906\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0","alt":""}\" data-image-title=\"image\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image-1.png?fit=500%2C755&ssl=1\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" data-src=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image-1-500x755.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-105023 lazyload\" style=\"width:350px;height:auto\" data-sizes=\"auto\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image-1.png?resize=500%2C755&ssl=1 500w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image-1.png?resize=99%2C150&ssl=1 99w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image-1.png?resize=370%2C559&ssl=1 370w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image-1.png?resize=20%2C30&ssl=1 20w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image-1.png?resize=32%2C48&ssl=1 32w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>NONFICTION<\/strong><br><strong><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/318\/9780226825557\">The Storytellers<\/a><\/em><\/strong><br><strong>By Michael Gorra<\/strong><br><strong>University of Chicago Press<\/strong><br><strong>Published September 21, 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" data-attachment-id=\"68356\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/2021\/12\/22\/crime-reading-pays-in-thrills-and-chills\/chirblogoend-1-2-4\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?fit=200%2C200&ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"200,200\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}\" data-image-title=\"chirblogoend-1-2\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?fit=200%2C200&ssl=1\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" data-src=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-68356 lazyload\" style=\"width:100px;height:auto\" data-sizes=\"auto\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?w=200&ssl=1 200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1 150w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?resize=180%2C180&ssl=1 180w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?resize=90%2C90&ssl=1 90w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?resize=20%2C20&ssl=1 20w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?resize=185%2C185&ssl=1 185w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?resize=100%2C100&ssl=1 100w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chirblogoend-1-2.png?resize=48%2C48&ssl=1 48w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The 19th-century tale is an altogether different beast than the modern literary short story\u2014different in subject matter and purpose, in style and structure. And yet the tale is the story’s ancestor. Michael Gorra’s highly readable work of literary history and criticism, The Storytellers, seeks to explain the relationship between these two literary forms. First Gorra…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":199145730,"featured_media":105021,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[309],"tags":[711769371,8518,711765984,711769372,1505616],"thb-sponsors":[],"class_list":["post-104383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-michael-gorra","tag-nonfiction","tag-reviews","tag-the-storytellers","tag-university-of-chicago-press"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - 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The movie, directed by Susanne Bier (<em>In a Better World<\/em>, <em>Bird Box<\/em>), is a sequel to <em>Practical Magic<\/em> (both films are based on books by Alice Hoffman) and comes almost twenty years after the 1998 cult hit. It follows Gillian (Kidman) and Sally (Bullock) and Sally\u2019s two children, Antonia (Maisie Williams) and Kylie (Joey King) some time in the future after the events of the first movie. Antonia, a younger of the newest generation of Owens sisters, is a medical resident, and Kylie, the older sister, is an undergraduate student. Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing also reprise their roles as the matriarchs of the Owens women, Jet and Franny. While following the basic structure and world set up in the first movie, it unfortunately fails to deliver any of the same magic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The story of the <em>Practical Magic<\/em> movies is simple. Many generations ago, Maria Owens, a witch, was so stricken with grief stemming from falling in love with a man that she cast a spell to curse any of her ancestors with the hopes of preventing them from the same fate. As a result of the spell, any man who falls in love with an Owens woman is cursed to die. Because of the curse, Sally and Gillian have tried to avoid falling in love. Sally failed twice, leading to two men dying. After experiencing loss, she vows to hide the fact that her children are witches, and does not tell them about the curse. Of course, the second movie then focuses on her daughter, Kylie, who falls in love with her college boyfriend, which leads to him getting hit by a car and falling into a coma, which forces the Owens women to attempt to break the family curse once and for all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yet despite its simplicity, the story provides more questions than answers. What happened to Sally\u2019s second love? What year is this sequel set in (there are smartphones, and the lead actresses are close to 60 years old, yet the children have only aged 10 years)? Did the sisters live together in that house with their aunts while still trying to hide their magic? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The filmmaking does little to distract from these questions. Immediately, the movie deploys aggressive anamorphic lenses, providing a fisheye effect that is distracting and ugly. The crew spent significant time and resources <a href=\"https:\/\/www.architecturaldigest.com\/story\/how-practical-magic-2-resurrected-one-of-the-most-beloved-movie-houses-of-all-time\">building an entire replica of the house<\/a> from the first film, meticulously recreating the details that made the first movie feel so whimsical, but this hard work is undone by the severe blurring caused by the lenses. Several of the scenes inside of the house are filmed with these curved lenses from the ceiling or from a wide shot on the edge of the room, making it feel like you\u2019re watching these women through the peephole of a hotel door. The effect is that the viewer is even further removed from the scenery and the relationships they\u2019re supposed to be interested in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The movie also relies on uninteresting, unnecessary CGI effects to depict the magic, which is disheartening. Movies are their own form of magic, so I\u2019m largely uninterested in watching movies about magic (especially when that magic is described as \u2018practical\u2019!) with heavy CGI and no whimsy. You can\u2019t take shortcuts on the titular hook, particularly when we know it\u2019s possible to create something so incredible through the visual medium of a movie. The magic in this movie is brutish and aggressive and so far from subtle, as opposed to the fun, practical effects of the first movie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To be clear, the first <em>Practical Magic<\/em> is not a perfect piece of cinema. It is rife with plot holes and is more campy than it is actually good. But it is also a fun story of sisterhood and love with some great music cues, a beautiful set, stunning women in their prime, and a very reasonable 105-minute runtime. The same cannot be said for <em>Practical Magic 2<\/em>, which comes in at 130 minutes and feels like 400 minutes. Part of the reason the minutes drag in this movie is because it is crammed full of the expected fan service of references to the first movie without any furtherance of the themes that make the first one shine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Without even comparing the legacy sequel to the original, it still fails on its own. The movie exclusively tells instead of shows, relying on shoddy dialogue that somehow required three writers to accomplish. The movie preaches that \u201cno magic is stronger than sisterhood\u201d while completely neglecting one of the younger Owens sisters. Maisie Williams\u2019s Antonia is barely on screen and has no character arc. Antonia\u2019s aunt Gillian has the same problem\u2014existing only to antagonize (and borderline flirt with) her sister Sally and to remind her nieces not to fall in love. The characters spend the two hour runtime talking about being sisters, and verbally reminding the audience of the curse, without demonstrating any actual love between the sisters or any convincing examples of romantic love. Lee Pace, who plays Ian Wright, a professor of magic, and the third love interest of Bullock\u2019s Sally, tries his best with the little he\u2019s given to work with. Joey King\u2019s Kylie is given less than a handful of minutes with her love interest, played by Xolo Maridue\u00f1a. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The movie has a handful of compelling moments, especially when Stockard Channing and Sandra Bullock are on screen, but the movie\u2019s biggest failure is in how it is completely incapable of sitting in any kind of earnest scene. Almost every single moment of emotional momentum is ruined by the disastrous CGI or the unintelligible script. During what should be an emotional moment near the end (but still so far from the end because there are at least 3 endings to this movie), Stockard Channing delivers a beautiful performance that is cut up by digitally-enhanced flashes of Dianne Wiest\u2019s character. It\u2019s unnecessary and shatters what could be the emotional heart of the film. In every instance that the movie could have pulled me in, it almost immediately pulled me right back out. Maybe there were too many cooks in the kitchen with this movie, because it certainly felt like there was no clear vision for the tone of the movie. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What makes me the angriest is that there was so much potential. Sandra Bullock is one of the funniest actresses in the world. Nicole Kidman is so fun and whimsical on her own. The fact that Dianne and Stockard are not only still around, but down to be in a sequel, is a gift. And while it should be celebrated that a movie led by two women who are closer to 60 than to 50 received a substantial budget and performed well on its opening weekend, that\u2019s not enough to call this a success. In what could have been a film full of laughter and tears, the only tears were tears of boredom and the only laughs were at the expense of the script. The heavy-handed attempts to cram nostalgia back down the audience\u2019s throat is akin to brewing a potion to force someone to love you. And as we all know, love potions never work. 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The movie, directed by Susanne Bier (In a Better World, Bird Box), is a sequel to Practical Magic (both films are based on books by Alice Hoffman) and comes almost twenty years after the 1998 cult…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/2026\/09\/20\/the-curse-of-nostalgia-in-practical-magic-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Chicago Review of Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-09-20T10:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-09-20T16:56:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Film-CHIRB-Reviews-Template-2.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2000\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"703\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Ashley Hatzenbihler\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ChicagoRevBooks\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ChicagoRevBooks\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Ashley Hatzenbihler\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/chireviewofbooks.com\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/20\\\/the-curse-of-nostalgia-in-practical-magic-2\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/chireviewofbooks.com\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/20\\\/the-curse-of-nostalgia-in-practical-magic-2\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Ashley Hatzenbihler\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/chireviewofbooks.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/89e1c971bed0b29f2e7c124b48a5eb18\"},\"headline\":\"The Curse of Nostalgia in Practical Magic 2\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-09-20T10:00:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-09-20T16:56:00+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/chireviewofbooks.com\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/20\\\/the-curse-of-nostalgia-in-practical-magic-2\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":1240,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/chireviewofbooks.com\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/chireviewofbooks.com\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/20\\\/the-curse-of-nostalgia-in-practical-magic-2\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/i0.wp.com\\\/chireviewofbooks.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/Film-CHIRB-Reviews-Template-2.png?fit=2000%2C703&ssl=1\",\"keywords\":[\"Film\",\"Review\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Film\",\"Reviews\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/chireviewofbooks.com\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/20\\\/the-curse-of-nostalgia-in-practical-magic-2\\\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/chireviewofbooks.com\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/20\\\/the-curse-of-nostalgia-in-practical-magic-2\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/chireviewofbooks.com\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/20\\\/the-curse-of-nostalgia-in-practical-magic-2\\\/\",\"name\":\"The Curse of Nostalgia in Practical Magic 2 - 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Dystopia We Live In: Sarah Anderson\u2019s \u201cFallow\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap wp-block-paragraph\">Capitalism and parenting are incompatible. Motherhood demands the time and energy capitalism normally exploits for a profit. But what if big business could mitigate the impact of a pregnancy by providing highly paid employees an alternative, a person to carry the child, eliminating the burden of pregnancy? Revenue retained, employees satisfied, all for the low cost of a staff surrogate. Sarah Anderson’s debut novel, <strong><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/318\/9780374621148\">Fallow<\/a><\/em><\/strong>, explores the premise in a humorous send-up of contemporary corporate culture and examination of motherhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Narrator Natalie has a toothache, but lacks the funds or dental insurance to properly address the situation. Her need for fast cash brings her to an experimental program run by The Company, a big tech conglomerate. She accepts a job offer to serve as a surrogate, gestating and birthing 7 children for the Company’s high-ranking employees. She’s provided a salary, housing, and, while pregnant, oversight of her diet, exercise, and medical treatment. Between pregnancies, in her fallow period, her only responsibility is recovering her fertility to repeat the process. Each vaginal birth earns her a bonus, and upon completing her final delivery, a life-changing sum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Natalie, who is one of 11 daughters, sees this occupation as an easy way to avoid a genuinely challenging job, and hopes ultimately to retire with a substantial nest egg. After six successful babies, she encounters a complication with her final child. Jackie, the woman whose child Natalie is carrying, is terminated by The Company. The surrogacy perk promised Jackie also ends with her employment. For Natalie, this means she’s expected to terminate the pregnancy and start again to complete her contract.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Big tech companies in recent years have prided themselves on reinventing existing things, like ride-sharing services realizing the efficiency of buses and rebranding mass transit. In the case of The Company, they have reinvented surrogacy. Surrogacy in America is an expensive process. Independent contractors typically work with couples who are struggling to conceive rather than trying to avoid pregnancy, although there are examples of celebrities like Kim Kardashian employing gestational surrogates. Natalie is enthusiastic, but mostly because she gets to live alone in a luxury apartment. What she doesn’t really see at first is how The Company exerts control over her and her body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the center of this novel are questions of money and power. The Company espouses the liberation surrogacy provides employees. They promise a successful program will reverse declining birthrates because employees, especially women, will not be burdened by pregnancy. The careers of female executives will thrive once they are liberated from the birthing process. But in order to enact their program, they rely on the exploitation of Natalie, who seemingly has little choice but to surrender herself to the opportunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Natalie’s gilded birdcage is one she steps into eagerly. But when the restrictions of The Company are lifted during her fallow period, she celebrates with sex, drugs, and alcohol. It’s a direct response to the rigidity of the oversight of her pregnancies. Working the job provides her with the funds to live her best life, and she embraces the freedom right up until The Company reveals how they have watched her during this downtime. Suddenly, what seemed like harmless fun is wielded against her and threatens to undo her promised bonus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Anderson shows us the flipside of capitalism’s aggressive exploitation when Jackie kidnaps Natalie and brings her to a commune of mostly women who farm and sell homemade tofu and goat-milk soap. This utopia is built on shared labor, democracy, and trust among the members. It’s the ideal. The commune’s mission is meant to escape the petty exploitation of the corporate world, yet the members still vote to forcibly bring Natalie into the community in the hopes of leveraging her for their own goals. Ultimately, they exert the same force to exploit Natalie. As a critique, Anderson has delivered us an insightful challenge to competing ideologies. Both societal structures are capable of evil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What makes this novel work is the soothing narrative point of view Natalie provides, bringing us along on her rollercoaster of a journey. Anderson has a strong sense of narrative pace with the correct comedic beats to deliver prose that is both readable and entertaining.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The book is not speculative fiction. Everything that does happen could be happening right now. And yet, there is a sense that Natalie lives in a dark dystopia, only here we can recognize it as the world we live in. Surrogacy seems like a perk that fits in alongside on-site yoga classes and free dinner in the cafeteria. Nevertheless, there are moments when it seems like the novel wants to dip into more fictional science, especially when it comes to the sperm used to impregnate Natalie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The sperm is one of many untidy strings. At times, there does seem like a risk that many of these plotlines could have ended up like the four-toed statue in <em>Lost<\/em>, a tangent that creates a mystery that is never returned to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There are unanswered questions. Natalie’s many sisters are more of a quirky backstory than a presence in the novel. The sperm producing the babies Natalie carries has an increasingly questionable provenance. The simmering public outcry dissipates without explanation. But somehow Anderson succeeds in introducing these unresolved plot points without those mysteries becoming unsettling. Much of that success can be pinned to Natalie’s character development, especially as she shifts from being a person with weak interpersonal relationships to being someone who is deeply connected to the people around her. And it’s these relationships that drive the novel. We end up caring more about how Natalie mends her friendships than we do about these other issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Fallow<\/em> was a fun, easy-to-read exploration of the limits of capitalism, motherhood, and friendship. It’s a little bit weird but in ways that are entertaining and sarcastic. The book disguises cultural criticism in humor, supported by a sympathetic everywoman who is easy to relate to, even in her extraordinary circumstances. <em>Fallow<\/em> delivers a cleverly plotted story with characters who grow in unexpected ways. And while parenting might be made easier with substitutes, Anderson reminds us too of how children can inspire our own growth as people.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"500\" height=\"768\" data-attachment-id=\"104993\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/2026\/09\/18\/the-dystopia-we-live-in-sarah-andersons-fallow\/attachment\/9780374621148\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9780374621148.webp?fit=600%2C921&ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"600,921\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0","alt":""}\" data-image-title=\"9780374621148\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9780374621148.webp?fit=500%2C768&ssl=1\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" data-src=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9780374621148-500x768.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-104993 lazyload\" style=\"width:350px;height:auto\" data-sizes=\"auto\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9780374621148.webp?resize=500%2C768&ssl=1 500w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9780374621148.webp?resize=195%2C300&ssl=1 195w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9780374621148.webp?resize=98%2C150&ssl=1 98w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9780374621148.webp?resize=370%2C568&ssl=1 370w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9780374621148.webp?resize=20%2C31&ssl=1 20w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9780374621148.webp?resize=31%2C48&ssl=1 31w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>FICTION<br><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/318\/9780374621148\">Fallow<\/a><\/em><br>By Sarah Anderson<br>Farrar, Straus and Giroux<br>Published September 15, 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js\" data-type=\"book_button\" data-affiliate-id=\"318\" data-sku=\"9780374621148\"><\/script>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" data-attachment-id=\"62170\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/2021\/03\/30\/libertie-kaitlyn-greenidge\/chirblogoend-1-1\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/chirblogoend-1-1.png?fit=200%2C200&ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"200,200\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}\" data-image-title=\"chirblogoend-1-1\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/chirblogoend-1-1.png?fit=200%2C200&ssl=1\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" data-src=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/chirblogoend-1-1.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-62170 lazyload\" style=\"width:100px;height:auto\" data-sizes=\"auto\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/chirblogoend-1-1.png?w=200&ssl=1 200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/chirblogoend-1-1.png?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1 150w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/chirblogoend-1-1.png?resize=180%2C180&ssl=1 180w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/chirblogoend-1-1.png?resize=90%2C90&ssl=1 90w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/chirblogoend-1-1.png?resize=20%2C20&ssl=1 20w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/chirblogoend-1-1.png?resize=185%2C185&ssl=1 185w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/chirblogoend-1-1.png?resize=100%2C100&ssl=1 100w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/chirblogoend-1-1.png?resize=48%2C48&ssl=1 48w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our review of Sarah Anderson’s debut novel, “Fallow”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6069203,"featured_media":104999,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[309],"tags":[711769368,6927157,1747,711765984,711769367],"thb-sponsors":[],"class_list":["post-104763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-fallow","tag-farrar-straus-and-giroux","tag-fiction","tag-reviews","tag-sarah-anderson"],"yoast_head":"<!-- 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The widely read, widely praised, widely taught works of literature that form what we come to think of as literature itself. Within that canon are authors whose names echo across the valleys of centuries of writing: Dostoevsky, Morrison, Bront\u00eb, Tolstoy, Calvino, Shelly. Amongst them, hailed should be Qian Zhongshu and <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/318\/9780811238601\"><strong><em>Fortress Besieged<\/em><\/strong><\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The new edition of <em>Fortress Besieged<\/em> is newly released by New Directions with a foreword by the inimitable Yiyun Li and was originally written in the 1940s during the height of the eight-year Sino-Japanese War. The main character, Fang Hung-chien, is a student abroad who has recently returned to his homeland of China. Despite his years abroad allegedly studying, Hung-chien is missing his most critical trophy: a doctoral degree. The anti-hero spent more time wandering and musing than actually studying, and when he realizes that his father and soon-to-be father-in-law (who never actually becomes his father-in-law when his bride-to-be passes unexpectedly) who are funding this degree would expect some evidence of it existing, he must resort to drastic measures: procuring a fake degree from an imaginary institution. From there, Hung-chien rolls with the punches of life from one city to another, one job to another, and one love interest to another, witty and impulsive the whole way along. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I found this book to be many things, but above all, I found it to be a humorous, satirical look at people in all facets of life. There were many moments in which I found myself not just laughing with but relating to the people in this book, from the jaded love interests Miss Sun or Miss Su to the foe-turned-friend Chao Hsin-Mei. The people in this book are real, and they are gritty and flawed and determined. Zhongshu captures that genuine human-ness that all great novelists are renowned for, that feeling when a reader realizes they are relating to someone far in the past. Hung-chien is an amicable main character, but one that is easy to both critique and sympathize with, who embodies both the good and bad of the human condition. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While Zhongshu is poking fun at humanity writ large, this book <em>is<\/em> called a fortress besieged, and the reason for that is from the French proverb \u201ca marriage is like a fortress besieged: those who are on the outside want to get in, and those on the inside can\u2019t wait to get out.\u201d The primary satire is about how we act in romantic relationships, specifically, how we behave in marriages once our true colors have shown. Hung-chien goes through a multitude of love interests: Miss Pao, Miss Su, Miss T\u2019ang, Miss Sun. For all of them, he finds that the element of love is missing, despite initial feelings of excitement and passion that ultimately dissipate over time. Nonetheless, Hung-chien does eventually get married (though to whom I won\u2019t say), and the last portion of this book is one of the greatest portrayals of a relationship crumbling I\u2019ve ever had the pleasure of reading. We are left questioning if he had just chosen his other option, if things would be different, though perhaps Zhongshu is suggesting they wouldn\u2019t be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In addition to the phenomenal characters, the plot of the book is entertaining, balancing humorous hiccups and serious occurrences greatly, as well as the dynamics between the characters and the historical backdrop in which this story takes place. It\u2019s accessible, beautifully written, and stokes intrigue incredibly well. I\u2019m sorry to say that prior to taking this review, Qian Zhongshu wasn\u2019t a name I had heard of, but it is now going to be held firmly in the list of literary giants who deserve their place on all shelves of those who love to read, to learn, and to experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:25px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"500\" height=\"773\" data-attachment-id=\"104986\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/2026\/09\/17\/fortress-beseiged-qian-zhongshu\/fortressbeseiged_cover\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/FortressBeseiged_Cover.webp?fit=600%2C928&ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"600,928\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0","alt":""}\" data-image-title=\"FortressBeseiged_Cover\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/FortressBeseiged_Cover.webp?fit=500%2C773&ssl=1\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" data-src=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/FortressBeseiged_Cover-500x773.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-104986 lazyload\" data-sizes=\"auto\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/FortressBeseiged_Cover.webp?resize=500%2C773&ssl=1 500w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/FortressBeseiged_Cover.webp?resize=194%2C300&ssl=1 194w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/FortressBeseiged_Cover.webp?resize=97%2C150&ssl=1 97w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/FortressBeseiged_Cover.webp?resize=370%2C572&ssl=1 370w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/FortressBeseiged_Cover.webp?resize=20%2C31&ssl=1 20w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/FortressBeseiged_Cover.webp?resize=31%2C48&ssl=1 31w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<div style=\"height:25px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>FICTION<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/318\/9780811238601\"><strong><em>Fortress Besieged<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>By Qian Zhongshu<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>New Directions Publishing Corporation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Published September 15, 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js\" data-type=\"book_button\" data-affiliate-id=\"318\" data-sku=\"9780811238601\"><\/script>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"2000\" data-attachment-id=\"56947\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/2026\/09\/17\/fortress-beseiged-qian-zhongshu\/chirblogoend\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/chirblogoend.png?fit=2000%2C2000&ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"2000,2000\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}\" data-image-title=\"chirblogoend\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/chirblogoend.png?fit=500%2C500&ssl=1\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" data-src=\"https:\/\/chireviewofbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/chirblogoend.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-56947 lazyload\" style=\"width:100px;height:auto\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our review of Qian Zhongshu’s classic, “Fortress 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