Review of “Funny Once” by Antonya Nelson.
Kathleen Yale
Posted inMay 12, 2014: Parks for All?
Not fade away
Monument Road:A NovelCharlie Quimby365 pages, softcover: $16.95.Torrey House Press, 2013. Rancher Leonard Self is the type of elderly man who keeps “his shades drawn, his talk necessary, his actions to the problem at hand.” In the wake of his wife Inetta’s death, he’s been winnowing his ranch goods, his farmhouse, his life itself, succumbing to […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 2014: The Hanford Whistleblowers
This is a man’s world
Ballistics: A NovelD.W. Wilson400 pages, hardcover: $26.Bloomsbury, 2013. Nestled in British Columbia’s remote Kootenay Valley, the town of Invermere is a place where “sons take after their dads and teenagers in lift-kit trucks catch air off train tracks … burn shipping flats at the gravel pits and slurp homebrew that swims with wood ether.” Here, […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2012: Identity Politics, Montana Style
Return to innocence: A review of Queen of America
Queen of AmericaLuis Alberto Urrea492 pages, softcover:$14.99.Little, Brown and Company, 2011. It’s hard to be a saint, but being a saint’s father, husband or friend can’t be easy, either. ‘Not all crosses are made of wood,’ as Luis Alberto Urrea observes in his novel Queen of America. It’s a sequel to his 2005 book, […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2011: The Global West
An L.A. story, in incidents and rhythms: A review of The Book of Want
The Book of Want: A NovelDaniel A. Olivas144 pages, softcover: $16.95.University of Arizona Press, 2011. “I want … I want everything. Everything that makes life beautiful.” So says Conchita, one of the many characters in Los Angeles writer Daniel Olivas’ The Book of Want. That Conchita is a voluptuous, amorous, unmarried 62-year-old with a penchant […]
Posted inMay 16, 2011: Ripple Effects
The painful beauty of love
In This Light: New and Selected StoriesMelanie Rae Thon256 pages, softcover: $15.Graywolf Press, 2011. Utah author Melanie Rae Thon maintains a seat beside fellow literary powerhouses Annie Proulx and Maile Meloy as she paints a portrait of a West that is at once desolate and tender. Written in fierce and unflinching prose, the stories in […]
Posted inOctober 1, 2010: Dancing with Climate Change
‘The music of men’s lives’
Work SongIvan Doig288 pages, hardcover: $25.95.Riverhead Books, 2010. “My train journey had brought me across the Montana everyone thinks of, mile upon hypnotic mile of rolling prairie with snowcapped peaks in the distance, and here, as sudden and surprising as a lost city of legendary times, was a metropolis of nowhere. …” In his latest […]