Reviews

As soon as I finished Small Rain, or at least once I snapped out of the adoring daze in which it left me, I ordered copies of Greenwell’s other books, this along with Cleanness. The three share a loose continuity, with (apparently) the same unnamed narrator. This book following him through a few years spent in Bulgaria, as he entwines with and parts from Mitko. Greenwell’s prose is as lovely here as in Small Rain, and I sometimes re-read sentences just to soak in them. Elements feel so tangible and real that they risk implanting ‘false’ memories, or drawing out those that share kinship in your own life, reflecting and refracting off these written words. Such was the flash to our protagonist’s history with his father on page 72: ...

I picked this up sight-unseen from the NYRB sale earlier this month. I went in thinking it was going to be more of the ‘blue’ as in sadness, and maybe as a nice modern accompaniment to one of the other books I bought, The Anatomy of Melancholy. Not so! This little book ends up being quite a bit about fucking and fondling and writing about fucking and fondling. Fun! But actually that is oversimplifying it. Glass is interested in how we write about sex and how we write ‘dirty words’ in general, among other things. ...

This review contains a lot of discussion of sex, cruising, and other “NSFW” stuff. I would encourage you to NOT read it if that makes you uncomfortable. I suppose it’s my fault. I picked this book up hoping for something a little closer to smut than the navel-gazing that we so often receive from Betancourt in these pages. If nothing else, it has served as a splendid source for reading recommendations, there are dozens and dozens of references to books, essays, films. Several of the essays are more or less about (or use to great length as framing) films or works of art as a device by which the author can reflect on relationship and sex dynamics. Some are interesting. Some are quite boring and annoying. ...

Gabor Maté is someone I’ve heard about occasionally over the years, probably for the first time when I read Bessel van der Kolk’s “The Body Keeps the Score,” which I’m pretty sure mentions him. I’ve never looked closely into his writing or speaking. His name was mentioned to me in therapy recently and like any good student I bought a book and went to reading. The book was published in 2003, so parts of it do feel a bit dated. GM introduces the term biopsychosocial in this text as though it is a new thing, and possibly it would be for the lay reader. As a social worker, it’s a term I’ve heard and practiced around for years. Much of GM’s theory on stress—disease connection would feel comfortable in the social work practice, I think. Many of the stories within feel familiar to experiences from my life, and the logic of it generally tracks for me. ...

I first read about Clancy Martin’s memoir sitting at the breakfast bar of a local restaurant. At the time I went every Sunday and read the New York Times Book Review. Whatever Sunday that happened to be, I read Alexandra Jacobs’ review and added it to my to-be-read list. I haven’t thought about the book much even as I’ve read several other texts on suicide and suicidal ideation over the few years since. Having now read it, I can scratch my head at Jacobs’ review and wonder: is this, in fact, a review? ...

I’ve been eyeballing Greenwell’s bluecovered Small Rain since the hardback hit my local bookstore’s shelves in 2024. I felt it reaching out for me, I could tell it would be sad and I didn’t know what flavour that sadness would be. I finally bought a copy a few months ago and have let it set on the living room table, to stare at for a few weeks, then I put it on my TBR shelf, away from the other up-next books that usually stack on that table. A few weeks ago I finished a book and without thinking at all I went to the shelf and pulled it down. Something about me knew it was time. Reading the first page, I started to worry—the writing is near-stream-of-consciousness, a style that exhausted me recently reading Mrs. Dalloway. Then, on the last line of the first page, that equally exhausting word: pandemic. ...

This was the November pick for our Small Press Fiction Book Club. I liked it! I wish I could say I loved it, but that’s not quite true. I found it really challenging to read. Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness writing, paired with very long sentences and a myriad of commas and semicolons and parentheticals takes a lot of effort to hold through. You can almost feel yourself running out of breath; I have to imagine that’s intentional. ...

I stayed up til 2AM last night (this morning…) to finish reading this, and I’m having kind of a hard time rating it. Very unlike Stephen King, the last third is a 5-star book. I rarely mind King’s endings, but a lot of them struggle a bit. This one didn’t, though I could understand some grumbling about parts of it. I did find it terribly slow to start, and I thought the relationship between Mears and Susan was excruciatingly boring and shallow, especially thinking about the romance in 11/22/63. ...

Notes p57 - There came a time when you realized that moving on was pointless. That you took yourself with you wherever you went. See Hemingway quote, [[The Sun Also Rises]]. p139 - (The first description of Dan in his role as Doctor Sleep and what that looks/feels like for him.) p143 - He wasn’t as close to the surface anymore, but he was still there and still the same ugly, irrational sonofabitch he’d always been. ...

I eagerly await hearing what my book club folks think about Seethaler’s book. I thought it opened with a lovely picture, and then there were some vignettes that I found compelling, but ultimately this felt overlong (and it’s only 190 pages), or perhaps it just felt so slow as to be hard for me to focus on. Notes Author: Robert Seethaler Last read: 2025-10-24 Rating: 2.5 Form: Fiction ...