San Francisco Chronicle // God Save the Fan by Will Leitsch

Cliches of course run rampant in most books about sports, and "God Save the Fan" suffers from its fair share. It also boasts the kind of superficiality that makes so much sports-talk radio so tedious. In speaking out against the sports establishment, however, Leitch demonstrates that he commands the kind of critical, independent spirit that if used effectively could raise all fans' awareness about how poorly they're being treated by the teams and leagues to which they devote so much time and money. It will come as no surprise if one day he produces a truly powerful book about the state of sports in America. "God Save the Fan" is not it.

You can find the entire review here.

The Believer // Detective Story by Imre Kertész

The February issue of The Believer contains my review of Detective Story by the great Hungarian novelist Imre Kertész. If you haven't read his previous books, especially Fatelessness, I'd like to encourage you to do so.

My friends Sheila Heti, Blake Butler, and Tayari Jones are all in the issue too, which makes me very happy. It's like hanging out with friends I don't get to see very often.

Philadelphia Inquirer // The Water Cure by Percival Everett

Frank Wilson over at my hometown Philadelphia Inquirer was nice enough to let me review Percival Everett's latest.

Consider yourself warned: The Water Cure will keep you awake at night for however long it takes you to read it and likely for a significant amount of time afterward. The novel, part revenge fantasy and part treatise on ancient philosophy, details the emotional devastation of a father beset on all sides by trouble and tragedy. It is at times violent, blasphemous, crude, juvenile, indecent, hilarious, upsetting - and altogether captivating, so to speak, for those very reasons.

11/27: Conversational Reading is discussing the review today. Some people over there aren't thrilled about my comparison of Everett to Gilbert Sorrentino.

11/28: My review has been reprinted in today's Lexington Herald-Leader and the Centre Daily Times in State College, PA.

12/5: PopMatters has also republished this review.

12/7: Minneapolis Star-Tribune too.

12/28: This review is all over the damn place.

12/16: San Jose Mercury News.

Miami Herald // Song for Night by Chris Abani

Abani writes like a man possessed by demons, but his fiction doesn't attempt to exorcize them so much as welcome and understand and times actively love them. His characters frequently experience moments of ecstatic release, and in Song for Night we get thoroughly caught up in a few of our own. This novella doesn't simply blur the lines between the real and the unreal -- or the real and the hyperreal -- but instead makes us question if those distinctions ever truly existed.

The review is here.