Category: New Books

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‘Julia’ by Sandra Newman is a Feminist Retelling of 1984

Though Newman sticks with the worldbuilding Orwell planned in 1949, not adding post-’84 developments like smartphones, home assistants, or the internet (though these actually do seem to play the surveillance role that Orwell assigned to the telescreens), she embroiders the edges of the original WWII-flavored vision with myriad amusing flourishes (and if you remember anything about 1984, you remember that amusing is not one of the adjectives that comes to mind). For example, though Julia is still a mechanic, working on the machines of Fiction, her first job at the Ministry of Truth was producing porno novels for proles, e.g., Inner Party Sinners: ‘My Telescreen is Broken, Comrade!’ Read more

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‘Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult’ by Maria Bamford

Some of her misadventures … feel like anything but laughing matters. But it’s a testament to Bamford that she’s able to fill these pages with stories that are relatable and consistently hilarious, even when they’re harrowing. Throughout, she rejects the appeal of tidy solutions, instead embracing messy self-acceptance. Read more

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The Twilight Zone and the Postwar American Dream

Historian Brokaw debuts with a penetrating analysis of how the Twilight Zone (1959–1964) exposed the dark underbelly of Cold War America. Examining key episodes, Brokaw argues that creator Rod Serling “sought to… reframe popular portrayals of white Americans’ wish-fulfillments as nightmares rather than aspirational dreams.” Read more

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‘Witness’ by Jamel Brinkley

Brinkley is a writer whose versatility knows no boundaries. He can make you laugh, cry, contemplate life’s deepest questions, remember what it was like to be a child, and feel the warmth, or chill, of your own family history. Tapping into the sticky stuff of humanity, each story is a gift of the highest quality, reminding us that we are all both in the audience and on life’s stage, even if we don’t know it. Forever the witness and the witnessed. Read more

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‘The Beast You Are’ by Paul Tremblay

Smart, self-aware, fun, creepy, and strange, The Beast You Are is even better than the outstanding Growing Things — and it further cements Tremblay as one of the finest voices in modern horror fiction as well as a dazzling innovator of the short form regardless of genre. Read more

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