Quill and Quire

BOOK REVIEWS

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By Ken Sparling

From its non-title to its long stretches of white space, Ken Sparling’s novel without a name announces itself as “experimental fiction.” Sparling has long been a student and champion of literary minimalism, and he takes ... Read More »

November 26, 2003 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Foreigners

By Stephen Finucan

Stephen Finucan’s second book of short fiction offers readers a paragraph from Emerson’s Self Reliance as an epigraph. The paragraph includes the famous lines: “Traveling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us ... Read More »

November 26, 2003 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

★ Ascension

By Steven Galloway

It is no doubt advisable to resist tightrope tropes while reviewing a novel that has at its heart a Transylvanian wire-walker. However, in Ascension, Steven Galloway performs a feat deserving of big top applause. In ... Read More »

November 26, 2003 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

All Hat

By Brad Smith

This novel gives good genre: advance publicity for All Hat describes it as country noir, and the shoe – or cowboy boot – fits. Set in the rusted farmbelts of Niagara and Northern Lake Erie, ... Read More »

November 26, 2003 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Original Minds

By Eleanor Wachtel

Imagine a lively cocktail party filled with fascinating people, like former Goon Show star Jonathan Miller, chimp specialist Jane Goodall, neurologist Oliver Sacks, filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci, scholar Harold Bloom, and urban planner Jane Jacobs. Imagine ... Read More »

November 26, 2003 | Filed under: Anthologies