During this holiday week, The Common is presenting highlights from the past year. Today’s highlights come from “Reviews.”
Read Melinda Misener’s review of Townie by Andre Dubus III, here, and Sarah Malone’s review of NW by Zadie Smith, here.
ASHLEY HONEYSETT
The short story collection The Voice of Blood is the first book by Mexican writer Gabriela Rábago Palafox to be translated into English, 35 years after its original publication. Rábago Palafox achieved some recognition in Mexico, winning a number of awards including the prestigious Puebla prize, but was not widely recognized in her lifetime.
SAM SPRATFORD
Uncle Frédo lies in the dark, water dripping through the sheet-metal roof. His American Dream crushed by the reality of existence as a non-white, non-citizen in the U.S., he returns to Haiti for the remainder of his life. He rarely speaks and is nearly always drunk. He spends his days in a dreamless twilight zone between sleep and wakefulness.
ANDREW STEINER
Divine showing? Demonic encounter? Guilty autoerotic experiment? Whatever it is, Lucian climbs down changed, unable to share what has happened to him yet persuaded the dull scrim has been torn off the world and he has glimpsed a sublime and terrible reality.
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