Literary Fiction Book Reviews

★★★★

In The Gods Wait by John von Dorf, you’ll find pessimists fighting to be optimistic about romance, a waitress’s vivid inner world, an internet troll’s thoughts on philosophy, and many other slices from diverse, scattered lives.

A collection of well-drawn characters seek fulfillment and meaning through various mediums, including film, insults, and food. Each obsession demonstrates the individual’s need and desire for grander meaning than their obsession actually delivers. The only voices with new ideas are shut down by the intentional defamation or self-congratulatory ignorance of other would-be intellectuals. Each character is defined as much by their hates as […]

★★★½

In Love Letters by Shaun Locke, the narrator is one of the wordiest protagonists in English literature, and he’s supposed to be. After introducing himself through an archaic tide of words, the narrator’s strange and sordid tale begins.

The narrator’s words continue to stretch the mundane into obscenely long sentences as the story unfolds. He finds his daughter has beautifully mastered the art of curse words. He hits a cat on the way to see the mother of his child, but he can’t see the mother of his child because she is locked away in an asylum for women. […]

★★★★

Joseph Barone’s existential novel, Bebette, tells the story of Lily, a 12-year-old girl with a rare form of blood cancer, as she grapples with her own mortality. After her family’s move from the allegorically named town of Reverie to the equally metaphorical town of Salvation, Lily develops a relationship with an imaginary friend named Bebette.

Bebette is a 5-year old child who looks like Alice in Wonderland but who speaks with the knowledge, insight, and wisdom of a much older person. The conversations held between Bebette and Lily are not those you would expect to encounter between two […]