During this holiday week, The Common is presenting highlights from the past year. Today’s highlights come from “Reviews.”
Read Melinda Misener’s review of Townie by Andre Dubus III, here, and Sarah Malone’s review of NW by Zadie Smith, here.
CARSON WOLFE
Exposition Ladies composes a love letter to the poorly scribbled female characters of Hollywood who exist solely to move the plot along. Each poem takes on the persona of one of these unformed vessels, often beginning with ‘I am the exposition lady’. Reminiscent of Carol Ann Duffy's The World's Wife, Exposition Ladies is a perfect example of how a book can contain a singular idea and expand outward.
Review by STEPHEN HUNDLEY
Omega Street. Malocchio. Napolitano and Calabrese. Fritz, Frederico, and Fred. In The Act of Contrition, a collection of linked stories and one novella, Joseph Bathanti reconstructs the mid-twentieth century in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh.
CHRIS JOHN POOLE
Narrative must accommodate reality, yet it can also give it new form. This Is Not Miami fizzles with this tension. Exploiting the duality of the crónica , Melchor asserts that truth and fiction are inextricable.
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