S. Hope Mills, Book Reviewer

Book Review

The Agriculture Hall of Fame

by S. Hope Mills

The ten stories in Andrew Malan Milward’s "The Agriculture Hall of Fame" are set in “the center of the center of America”: Kansas. And they are all, in their own unique ways, wild, hopeful, and devastating. From “Quail Haven,... Read More

Book Review

Cataclysm Baby

by S. Hope Mills

The twenty-six fathers narrating the alphabetized “chapters” of Matt Bell’s "Cataclysm Baby" rope themselves to the reader, pulling him toward worlds where “fists of black hail fall from the cloudless sky and spatter the house,... Read More

Book Review

Something in My Eye

by S. Hope Mills

The characters in Michael Jeffrey Lee’s "Something in My Eye" come out from under all sorts hiding places—a slaughterhouse floor, a whorehouse, a couch by the edge of a river, even hell. It’s these characters that compelled... Read More

Book Review

Before the End, After the Beginning

by S. Hope Mills

The quote is well-worn: “It’s the journey that matters.” Dagoberto Gilb’s appropriately titled new collection—*Before the End, After the Beginning—*gives us ten such adventures. And Gilb should know a thing or two about... Read More

Book Review

Assumption

by S. Hope Mills

Ogden Walker—biracial, former Marine, sheriff’s deputy, main character in Percival Everett’s latest novel, "Assumption": a man who prefers fly fishing to firearms and violence. Or so we assume. Everett’s prose is stark, so plain... Read More

Book Review

Out of Time

by S. Hope Mills

Winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Award for Short Fiction, the stories in "Out of Time", are tethered to complicated relationships and losses, often swaying in and out of reality. “Tangle Apple Flesh” begins as “Cooper sat naked... Read More

Book Review

When She Woke

by S. Hope Mills

“When she woke, she was red. Not flushed, not sunburned, but the solid, declarative red of a stop sign.” In Hillary Jordan’s dystopian novel When She Woke, Hannah Payne is a Red, a criminal. Chroming—the genetic altering of skin... Read More

Book Review

The Beautiful One Has Come

by S. Hope Mills

Suzanne Kamata’s collection of stories "The Beautiful One Has Come" explores the tension, and sometimes beauty, of straddling two very different cultures. In some cases this takes a very physical form, like being an American mother in... Read More

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