I knew I was happy to be on this ride from the first sentence. A reference to (the fictional) Proofrock, ID had me googling to make sure that it didn’t exist and could be read as a Prufrock reference and likely others besides. Jones’ work is blithely literary, coopting the horror or thriller and (I…

Alicia and Remy are like aliens who only know how to act like humans based on the knowledge they’ve gleaned from an Instagram feed. They are terrifying from the outset, in an “uncanny valley” sort of way, blurring the lines between the familiar and the alien. As the story unfolds, the exploration of their otherworldly…

Alicia and Remy are like aliens who only know how to act like humans based on the knowledge they’ve gleaned from an Instagram feed. They are terrifying from the outset, in an “uncanny valley” sort of way, blurring the lines between the familiar and the alien. As the story unfolds, the exploration of their otherworldly…

While I had not read the Young Adult novels from which this novel was a spin off, I’m familiar with his work and looked forward to the release of Attack Surface, which is definitely for a grown up readership, in large part due to the darkness at the heart of the novel. The sci-fi aspect…

First, I love the cover of the book. A tiny man rolls a giant peach up a mountain, a la Sisyphus. I’ve followed David Chang since he began publishing Lucky Peach magazine (I was a die-hard McSweeneys fan, and LP was one of their projects). The magazine was smart, irreverent, and even though I’m not…

This book will alarm you, and it should. MacWilliams doesn’t pull punches. It’s not meant to be exhaustive. This small volume succinctly and bluntly makes the case that, frankly, we have problems. And the book seems to be intended for those who are perhaps less aware of our nation’s history. I hope that such an…

Nunez quotes Simone Weil, “The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say, ‘What are you going through?’” But she could have just as easily quoted Sartre, “Hell is other people.” Nunez conveys the daily anguish of attempting to communicate with those around her, from her character’s most intimate…

Samantha Irby has a unique, self-deprecating, almost stream-of-consciousness kind of delivery. I use the word delivery deliberately because it’s highly conversational, with patter like stand-up. The title is what caught my eye, as I had not come across her work before, but believe I will track down her other books, as well as her blog.However,…

Jones recreates the way our minds work, the way we believe all the terrifying things we would never give voice to because they are too outrageous or too silly, but that which we KNOW in our bones to be absolutely irrefutable. It’s a tightrope walk, and we are never more vertiginously vulnerable than when we…