“The narrative of ‘The Hairdresser’s Son’ is deceptively desultory, proceeding in short chapters that slowly ramp up into a plot.” In @clereviewbooks.bsky.social‬‬, Rebecca Starks reviews Gerbrand Bakker’s newly translated novel, “The Hairdresser’s Son” - clereviewofbooks.com/rebbeca-star...

Pasolini @ Bright Lights; Kurosawa, Aronofsky, and Spike Lee @newleftreview.bsky.social; Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Neo Sora @ Metrograph; OZ @defector.com; James Benning @clereviewbooks.bsky.social … and lots more! Did You See This? www.criterion.com/current/post...

"Without history, we risk becoming those ants of post-war Düren, struggling without their queen, scurrying around, aimless, suicidal, and without purpose, bound to repeat our worst mistakes." Gus O’Connor on Michael Lentz's "Schattenfroh" clereviewofbooks.com/michael-lent...

"The ability to read oil is central in how it might allow us to read anew larger social structures that make the United States and its hegemonic global influences." @vikamujumdar.bsky.social on Jung Yun's "O Beautiful" and petrofiction today. clereviewofbooks.com/o-beautiful-...

I wrote about Sebastian Castillo’s new book “Fresh, Green Life” for @clereviewbooks.bsky.social about one man’s quixotic journey to the end of the night. clereviewofbooks.com/vow-of-silen...

"God is dead like Gen-X self-sufficiency, Millennial irony, and Gen-Z cringe. God is dead unless you force her to live." From an experimental essay by @danilamorte.bsky.social about Michael Greene's 1990's book, "Bataille's Wound." clereviewofbooks.com/conflagratio...

"The cigarette, when it appears, is a bid for intimacy alongside tension and risk. With one man she dates after her divorce, he convinces her to smoke in the backyard naked... It is in the glow of this cigarette that I feel like I can see Haley at last." clereviewofbooks.com/stories-amid...

“He doesn’t let your gaze wander around the scene with curiosity: he insists you focus on one terrible act only.” In @clereviewbooks.bsky.social‬‬‬, Rebecca Hanssens-Reed reviews Felix Nesi’s newly translated novel, “People from Oetimu” - clereviewofbooks.com/felix-nesi-p...

"While a fantastic beat reporter and astute ball-knower, MacMahon both perpetuates and falls victim to Publishing's hastily-written-athlete-biography-industrial complex. @podracingchamp.bsky.social on @bannedmacmahon.bsky.social's "The Wonder Boy" clereviewofbooks.com/i-think-its-...

“Dylan knew that the only right thing to do would be to put down the spaghetti, remove the towel, drive the twenty minutes to the care facility, hug the woman, and tell her, no, his father wasn’t locked-in.” New short fiction from Matt Weir. clereviewofbooks.com/the-drivers-...

Vol. 3.1 is out! Childhood detective agencies, aggro drift, poetry's desires, translation politics, writing that blisters, aesthetic disruption, thermal surges, and digital tokens. Bounded in beautiful sky blue. Order a copy! clereviewofbooks.com/product/vol-...

I'm unreasonably happy to see this excerpt of Big Feelings in the one and only @clereviewbooks.bsky.social Thanks for everyone's infinite patience with the footnotes. 💜💜💜💜 clereviewofbooks.com/from-big-fee...

Ok #Cleveland, I need you! I was supposed to be on local NPR tomorrow to share a CLE HTS #pride event at Mac’s Backs Sat at 7 (I’m giving a talk about my book about hope and joy in dark times). Show had to be moved—so please help me spread the word! #transrights #history #ohio #books

A poem, “Food Science,” from Zach Savich for our “Appetite Studies” Cleveland Humanities Festival series. clereviewofbooks.com/appetite-stu...

"It is only under a new moon I learn to take you seriously. I leave my bed unmade, I show up late for work." from "Fuel" by Rosie Stockton clereviewofbooks.com/rosie-stockt...

"It is easier to imagine the end of opera, or art in general, than the end of capitalism." Thomas Hobohm & Nicholas Z. Liu on Yuval Sharon's "A New Philosophy of Opera" @wwnorton.com clereviewofbooks.com/yuval-sharon...

"What illness and pain cast into relief is that our minds will always be lost in translation—and will always remain in a liminal space—somewhere between our embodiment and the world." Mala Chatterjee on Xi Xi's "Mourning a Breast" @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social clereviewofbooks.com/xi-xi-mourni...

"Never give way on your desire? My dude, how do I even begin?" @podracingchamp.bsky.social kicked off "Appetite Studies," our fourth Cleveland Humanities Festival (2025 theme: Appetite) inspired series, with an essay on desire and "The White Lotus" season 3. clereviewofbooks.com/appetite-stu...

“Where on the island of Manhattan are forty-five bulls supposed to sleep?” Max Ornstein on Professional Bull Riding and the cultures it presents, resents, and represents. clereviewofbooks.com/fear-and-glo...

"I didn’t feel like a god. Thank God I don’t feel like a god." from "Unconscious Self-Regulation", one of three poems we've published by Rennie Ament clereviewofbooks.com/three-poems-...

"These stories exist in the same universe—dilapidated and hyper-developed, inhabited by emotionally fragile and lonely characters desperate for some type of connection." Merilyn Chang on Daisuke Shen's "Vague Predictions and Prophecies" @clashbooks.bsky.social clereviewofbooks.com/daisuke-shen...

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"Me, I am Goodness and Justice, and I want to kill the radish because he’s rich and the peasants are dying of hunger." from Sylvain Trudel's "The Harmattan Winds" (trans. Donald Winkler) @archipelagobooks.bsky.social www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/from...

"After recovery, the self remains altered – even if only in the self-knowledge it has acquired through its estrangement." Madeleine on Eliza Barry Callahan’s “The Hearing Test” www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/eliz...

Read "THE AFTERLIVES OF KETAMINE INFUSIONS," excerpted from Ahmad Almallah's "Wrong Winds" www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/from...

"...This is how the book situates itself historically, not about identity but moving through the possibility of several identities." Christian Wessels on Farid Matuk's "Moon Mirrored Indivisible" www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/fari...

"Maybe all I want from a movie—what any of us wants—is not only something to talk about, but something to talk to." Cary Stough on the art of criticism and CRB's winter quarter. www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/wint...

"The card was heavy in my hand, and in old-style type it announced that she would host a great Midsummer gathering at her estate on a lake to the west of Berlin." from Rob Rubsam's story "The Garden Party." www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/the-...

"Leda constantly invents and reinvents the mythology of himself, as if writing his own hagiography." Thomas Wee on Genet, Freud, and Mark Hyatt's "Love, Leda" www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/mark...

"Poetry requires a medium, and a context, but—like Soylent Green—it’s made of people." Stephanie Burt on Ryan Ruby's "Context Collapse" www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/ryan...

"I liked the emergency room doctor who said, “This isn’t an emergency. You could’ve waited another hour.” Then stabbed a thing into my lung." from Zach Savich's "A Field of Telephones" www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/zach...

"Each appearance of gender, which is to say each appearance in our lives of those fuzzy unconscious signals, breaks up and splits into multiple messages." Dani Lamorte on Avgi Saketopoulou and Ann Pellegrini's "Gender Without Identity" www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/avgi...

"The poems in Grand Tour are marked by restlessness: their speakers seem uncomfortable, even trapped, within their lyric moments." Edward Sambrano III on Elisa Gonzalez's "Grand Tour" clereviewofbooks.com/writing/elis...

Because who doesn’t love a slogan coiled like a jack in the box? A wallop on a loaded spring, a motto you can’t help but mutter so its syllables can roll like buckshot in the cupped hand of your mouth? -two poems from Conor Bracken www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/two-...

"Chekhov’s gun isn’t always firing; sometimes it’s the small, insignificant moments that happen in the meantime [...] pinpricks of tenderness, the levity of a vignette that passes." Emily Alexander on Aysegul Savas's "The Anthropologists" www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/ayse...

I wrote about @ryanruby.bsky.social @clereviewbooks.bsky.social www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/ryan...

"America was on its way out, the stranger insisted. This much was clear." an excerpt from "See Friendship" by @jeremygordon.bsky.social www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/see-...

"The result is a remarkable work of synthesis, overlay, and double exposure, in which past and present, child and adult, literary figure and family member illuminate each other.” Rachel Trousdale on Heather Christle's "In the Rhododendrons" www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/heat...

"I want to start by saying I sometimes think about returning to Cleveland." from "I want to start by saying" by Samuel Ace, published by the Cleveland State University Poetry Center www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/samu...

"None of the author’s controversies have been as bizarre as the one presently, which, perhaps unsurprisingly, circles back to his preoccupation with sex. " Jason Rogers on Michel Houellebecq's "Annihilation" (@fsgbooks.bsky.social) and his legal battles. www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/mich...

"Because even if you're speaking about ghosts, you're always speaking about yourself—about your neighbors and about your own history." Daisuke Shen interviews Yuri Herrera, author of "Season of the Swamp" (@graywolfpress.bsky.social) www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/yuri...

"You can wake up to someone day after day and still they’ll appear disfigured somehow, pummeled by the early light." from Sam Eichman's story "A Little Too Much Sun". www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/sam-...

"Compared to Stoker’s belief in the positive influence of the Enlightenment and traditional Christian faith, Eggers’s narrative is a darker meditation on modernity’s spiritual blindness." CRB's very own Bri Di Monda on Robert Eggers's "Nosferatu" www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/robe...

"If a shared appreciation of culture is a means of expressing these desires covertly, 'Our Evenings' suggests that it can also prove treacherous." Peter Huhne on Alan Hollinghurst's "Our Evenings" www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/alan...

"MY ARM??? PHANTOM LIMB > GLOOM IS INSIDE ME> A CYBRID LIMB..." from "Gloom 11: Epilogue" by Jake Reber @1111press.bsky.social www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/from...

"Introspection is a natural recourse for those of us who haven't been struck by a primal yen to be mothers. It’s also lonely and yields diminishing returns." @sophiastewart.bsky.social on Anastasia Berg's and Rachel Wiseman's "What are Children For?" www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/anas...

"Labatut and Best both fear this outcome. But Labatut does not realize we already live in a world governed by an alien intelligence." Jordan Ecker on "The Automatic Fetish" and "The MANIAC" @versobooks.bsky.social @penguinpress.bsky.social www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/beve...

"I thought eventually Jo-Ann Fabrics would stop feeling like a translated Jo-Ann Fabrics, parallel to but separate from the source." @uawilk.bsky.social, from "The Keeper" www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/from...

"Laughner...a tragic poet amidst the end of the industrial empire of which Cleveland and Northeast Ohio were a microcosm." Andrew Worthington interviews @aaronlange.bsky.social about "Ain't It Fun" and Cleveland's 70s punk scene: www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/aaro...

FROM SHAMS: The Atlanta Hawks are trading forward De'Andre Hunter to the Cleveland Cavaliers for Caris LeVert, Georges Niang, three second-round picks and two swaps, sources tell ESPN.