Since they started being widely reported at the end of 2018, I’ve sporadically been hearing and reading about the Meng Wanzhou extradition proceedings and the two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, who were arrested in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in apparent retaliation to Meng’s arrest in Canada.i Through this exposure, I’ve had…
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I’m a huge Kazuo Ishiguro fan, so you can probably imagine how excited I was when I found out a new book of his was out. The prospect of actually reading Klara and the Sun1 got me to agree to write a book review in The Walleye again after so long away. I figured that…
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I suspect that this is going to be a difficult argument to make, especially since it feels wrong to me, untrue, on some level. And so it not only takes a lot for me to break through these feelings to arrive at the actual logic that leads me to the idea, but I also suspect…
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I’ve been writing regularly again for a little while now, but it’s been different than what I’ve been posting in the past. I’ve been honing my skills at essay writing, and I think I’m about ready to start sharing, starting next week. The current plan is to post monthly, but I may do so more…
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by Joe Fiorito All I Have Learned is Where I Have Been, a poetry collection, contains quick snapshots of vivid moments. Fiorito expands his focus from those on the outskirts of society who were almost exclusively his subject matter in his previous work, City Poems, to include the more mundane aspects of life as well….
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by John Elizabeth Stintzi Junebat is a book of free verse poetry, with an underlying narrative and connected themes between pieces concerning the author’s struggles to understand their gender identity. It’s presented in the context of metamorphosis––their life before, the change, and afterward, with one poem directly comparing this with a caterpillar changing into a…
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by Stéphane Larue In The Dishwasher, we follow a mostly unnamed narrator as he tries to crawl out of the gutter of his life. The story focuses on his gambling addiction, how it controls him––mind, body, and soul––and causes him not only to fall further and further into debt and effectively drop out of college,…
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by Emily St. John Mandel Jonathan Alkaitis made a vast fortune investing other people’s money. On one of his many trips to the hotel he owns––the dazzling Hotel Caiette, located on a remote British Columbia island––he hits it off with the bartender, Vincent, and carries her off into a life of luxury as his trophy…
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by Maria Reva Good Citizens Need Not Fear is, succinctly, a collection of connected short stories, but a fuller description is a bit more complicated. Set in a small, late Soviet-era Ukrainian town, the stories build upon the previous ones and often bleed into the stories that follow, creating an ongoing narrative that showcases the…
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by Lucy Ellmann I wish people would be a bit more careful with literary comparisons. I understand the desire to relate new stories to others that readers are more than likely familiar with in order to quickly pitch the book, but superficial comparisons that set readers up for the wrong impressions seem to be increasingly…
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