All posts tagged: reviews

Review: The Extinction of Irena Rey

By JENNIFER CROFT
Review by CHRIS JOHN POOLE 

cover of Jennifer croft's the extinction of Irena rey


At first, the autobiographical roots of
The Extinction of Irena Rey seem simple to trace. This is a novel by writer-translator Jennifer Croft, who works in Spanish and Polish; its protagonist is a Spanish writer-translator. This is a novel from the acclaimed translator of Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights; the eponymous Irena Rey is a Polish literary megastar. This is a novel from a staunch advocate for translators’ visibility; its eight main characters are all translators who seek—and perhaps supplant–their elusive muse.

Yet it is the very abundance of extratextual parallels that makes it so difficult to situate Croft within her text. Unlike Croft’s debut Homesick, a hybrid novel-memoir, The Extinction of Irena Rey provides no single stand-in for its author; instead, a network of interlinked characters echo Croft’s own life. From the novel’s tantalising biographical parallels, countless questions arise: is Irena Rey modelled on Tokarczuk or Croft? Is protagonist Emilia a self-insert, or a novel creation? Ultimately, it seems, these characters are hybridisations of Croft and her influences, as within this novel the lines between self and other, like those between truth and fiction, begin to blur.

Review: The Extinction of Irena Rey
Read more...

Friday Reads: October/November 2023

Curated by OLIVE AMDUR

As this week of costumes, candy, and spooky Halloween cheer comes to an end, we at The Common are gearing up for the launch of our fall issue! Issue 26—full of vivid poems and prose from all over the world, as well as a special portfolio of writing and art from the migrant farmworker community—launches this coming Monday. After a brief Friday Reads hiatus, to get you excited about the issue, we return this month with recommendations from Issue 26 contributors Ned Balbo and Nora Rodriguez Camagna. Keep reading to see what’s been on their shelves this fall! 

Friday Reads: October/November 2023
Read more...

Friday Reads: July 2023

Curated by SOFIA BELIMOVA and OLIVE AMDUR

The fireworks have finally quieted down, but July has just begun to heat up! Whether you are looking for a book to help you forget the hot weather or a book filled with just as many vivid sensations as the summer season is, keep on reading. In this month’s Friday Reads feature, three of our interns recommend dynamic stories about the nightclubs of the Midwest, a boarding school in coastal Rhode Island, and the tangled relationships of a young person’s body and spirits.

Friday Reads: July 2023
Read more...

Review of “I Will Not Fold These Maps”

By MONA KAREEM

Translated from the Arabic by SARA ELKAMEL

Reviewed by SUMMER FARAH

Cover of Mona Kareem's I Will Not Fold These Maps, orange cover with white writing.

My first encounter with Mona Kareem’s work was not her poetry, but her essay in Poetry Birmingham on the trend of Western poets “translating” from languages they are not literate in. Kareem brings attention to what she calls the “colonial phenomenon of rendition as translation,” in which a poet effectively workshops a rough translation done by a native speaker or someone who is otherwise literate in the original language. Often, this is the only way acclaimed writers reach Western audiences. I was excited, then, to see that I Will Not Fold These Maps, Kareem’s first collection translated to English, defies this trend. Presented with the original Arabic alongside the English translated by Egyptian poet and journalist Sara Elkamel—for whom this work is a debut full-length translation—this book is a mixture of Kareem’s previously collected work alongside brand new poems, presenting a great overview of her work. I Will Not Fold These Maps’s execution as a collaboration between Arab poet-translators only strengthens the experience of reading it, filled with poems that vividly explore exile, grief, and writing and its relationship to resistance.

Review of “I Will Not Fold These Maps”
Read more...

Friday Reads: April 2023

Curated by SOFIA BELIMOVA

Things are finally warming up here in Western Mass: old snow banks are melting and fuzzy buds are popping up on the trees. Our spring issue—which features a portfolio of stunning fiction from Kuwait, apocalyptic poetry, a Ramadan romance, and a story about a dog in a Texas barrio—launches in just a few short weeks. If you’re wondering where these writers get their inspiration, look no further than this round of Friday Reads. 

 

Cover of Jane Wong's "Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City" with a picture of a colorful crab on beige background.
Friday Reads: April 2023
Read more...

Present Tense Machine: A Review

By GUNNHILD ØYEHAUG (Translated from the Norwegian by KARI DICKSON)

Reviewed by OLGA ZILBERBOURG

 

Book cover of Present Tense Machine by Gunnhild Oyehaug

Laura is expecting a baby. A twenty-four-year-old literature instructor, she lives with her partner Karl Peter in the heart of Bergen, a city in the westernmost part of Norway. She’s suffering from a strange sort of anxiety, which she suspects has something to do with the pregnancy: everything around her seems double, not quite like what it is.

Laura has more common anxieties as well, including a problem with her apartment. The buildings in her part of town are constructed of brick on the outside and wood inside, which makes them so flammable that they’re called “chimney houses.” If their chimney house were to catch on fire, there would be little chance of escape. Then, there are the noisy students living above and below, a drug dealer across the street, hypodermic needles littering the neighborhood. She decides that she and Karl Peter have to move before the baby comes, but this decision, too, seems to bring her nothing but anxiety.

Present Tense Machine: A Review
Read more...

Review: June Gervais’s Jobs for Girls with Artistic Flair

By SUSAN SCARF MERRELL

cover of June Gervais's jobs for girls with artistic flair

Rarely is a book as delightful as June Gervais’s debut novel, Jobs for Girls with Artistic Flair, a story of people who do their best to be better and then fail and try again with courage and integrity. These characters cannot be dismissed or ignored, because they don’t give up. The novel is about belief: in one’s self, in others, and in the future. These days, such belief can be a difficult emotion to muster, so Gervais’s success in this regard is even more laudable.

The novel takes place in the mid-1980s in the fictional Long Island town of Blue Claw, somewhere near the location of Riverhead, New York. The novel’s time period is one that, until recently, I might have considered to be post-feminist. Women could have it all, we were told, and most of us believed it. Our innocence, or naiveté, had yet to be dashed. But Gina Mulley, the main character of Gervais’s novel, is another case entirely—she exists in a world without labels like feminism. 

Review: June Gervais’s Jobs for Girls with Artistic Flair
Read more...

Friday Reads: July 2022

Curated by SOFIA BELIMOVA

This round of Friday Reads brings you mini book reviews from The Common’s Literary Publishing Interns. From shapeshifting professors to self-deprecating travelers, these reading recommendations will enliven your summer TBR list, whether you curl up with a book in the sunshine or cool off somewhere in the shade.

Friday Reads: July 2022
Read more...

Friday Reads: June 2022

Curated by ELLY HONG

In this round of Friday Reads, we hear from two poets whose work was featured in Issue 23 of The Common. Read on for mini reviews of an imaginative and timely poetry collection and essays on the transportive power of that genre.

 

Friday Reads: June 2022
Read more...