Book Review
Mount Verity
by Bella Moses
In Therese Bohman’s coming-of-age novel "Mount Verity", a childhood tragedy alters the trajectory of an artist’s life. On Easter Eve in 1989, Hannah’s older brother Erik disappears during a midnight trip to a mountain with a mythic...
Book Review
The Gods in Small Doses
by Bella Moses
In Josh Bell’s short story collection The Gods in Small Doses, vibrant mythical and mundane characters face uncanny, darkly comic circumstances. These eccentric, poignant stories oscillate between moods, settings, and genres. They...
Book Review
Ever Since We Small
by Bella Moses
Generations of women wrestle with an inherited legacy of trauma in Celeste Mohammed’s sprawling novel-in-stories "Ever Since We Small". Split into two sections, “Then” and “Now,” the novel does a masterful job of capturing the...
Book Review
Fit Into Me
by Bella Moses
Molly Gaudry’s "Fit Into Me" is a hybrid book that challenges notions of the self, authenticity, reliability, appropriation, and truth. This multigenre work—both a novel-within-a-memoir and a memoir-within-a-novel—follows the...
Book Review
The Mushroom Gatherer
by Bella Moses
In Viktorie Hanišová’s lyrical novel "The Mushroom Gatherer", a woman uncovers painful childhood memories that lie in wait beneath the surface of her quiet life. In the seven years since she ran away from home and never looked back,...
Book Review
Oleander Marriage
by Bella Moses
Eleanor Lerman’s poignant poetry collection reflects on the forces of nostalgia, love, loss, and grief that shape personal and communal history. Oleander, a flowering shrub known for its stunning beauty and dangerous toxicity, is...
Book Review
The Life of Violet
by Bella Moses
The interconnected early stories in Virginia Woolf’s "The Life of Violet" have radical perspectives on women’s friendships, independence, and places in society. Violet, a giantess inspired by Woolf’s lifelong friend Violet...
Book Review
Open Turns
by Bella Moses
Triumphs do not come in the form a young immigrant expected in the nuanced memoir "Open Turns". Hendrika de Vries’s moving memoir "Open Turns" is about facing postwar displacement and discrimination in Australia. In war-torn Amsterdam,...
