Lily K. Hoang

Much of the fiction in this wonderful anthology could be classified as fabulist or as conceptual writing, but there is a new sensibility here--one that transcends these categories. These pieces just feel darker, funnier, meaner. Often when I read a fiction anthology selling itself as "innovative" I end up running into the same old postmodern self-reflexive ironic gesturing that has been around at least as long Barthelme. This is not the case here. The fact that I didn't "get" some of these pieces was satisfying. This is the kind of book where you want to invent new names for a moment. "The New ________ists." I'll leave it to someone else to name what it is we're seeing here.… (mere)