New Books: October 23 Week
Here’s a quick look at some of the great fiction out this week. Happy pub day to all! Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Friday Black “This book is dark and captivating and essential. This book is a call to arms and…
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A Little Like Hope by Jason Jackson
O was twenty-nine when he died, and now he lives in my head. He says it’s like swimming. He can’t breathe. “You don’t have to,” I say. “You’re dead.” But he just sighs. At first, there was a lot of…
Reaching Out: Endings of Joy Williams
By Elizabeth Mayer • Death and loss and decay pervade the stories of Joy Williams’s collection Escapes. If a character is not facing the immediacy of their own death, often they are mourning the loss of someone close to them. Yet…
The Art of Description in A.S. Byatt’s “The Chinese Lobster”
By Chaya Bhuvaneswar • The display is brightly lit, and arranged on a carpet of that fierce emerald-green artificial grass used by greengrocers and undertakers. Round the edges on open shells, is a border of raw scallops, the pearly flesh dulling,…
New Books: October 8 Week
Here’s a quick look at some of the great fiction out this week. Happy pub day to all! Camille Acker, Training School for Negro Girls “The lives of the girls and women featured in these stories are rendered with…
Kuchizi by Lucas Schaefer
Carlos Ortega roaming Africa was a ridiculous proposition, which was why everyone who heard the idea savored its deliciousness. For all his thirty-nine years, Carlos had prowled the same few blocks east of the interstate, and to conceive of him…
“Kuchizi,” by Lucas Schaefer, Part IV
This was how it came to pass that on a windy Friday evening in Malindi, Kenya, fighting out of the red corner, at 143 pounds, all the way from Austin, Texas, USA, came Carlos Ortega, in shackles and a loin…
“Kuchizi,” by Lucas Schaefer, Part III
And so it went for two rounds, three rounds: Carlos relaxing Hassan’s shoulders, lifting his elbows, adjusting his right foot this way or that, all without laying a finger on the panting butcher. Once, he looked back to Felix, worried…
“Kuchizi,” by Lucas Schaefer, Part II
In the afternoon, Carlos and Felix were scheduled to train at the facilities of The Butcher. On the ride downtown, the men the sole passengers in a twelve-seat van, Felix relaxed into his headphone-protected daze. Carlos, meanwhile, felt as if…
“Kuchizi,” by Lucas Schaefer, Part I
Carlos Ortega roaming Africa was a ridiculous proposition, which was why everyone who heard the idea savored its deliciousness. For all his thirty-nine years, Carlos had prowled the same few blocks east of the interstate, and to conceive of him…