Category Archives: Book Reviews

California On Sale

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Here’s a brief and bonny update to let you know that all our University of California Press titles are currently 10% off! Do be sure to stop by the bookstore and grab yourself some bargain brilliance. There are plenty of tempting titles to choose from, including…

University of California trio

Anteparadise by Raúl Zurita; translated by Jack Schmitt (bilingual edition)

Zurita is one of Latin America’s most celebrated poets and the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Literature Prize, the Pablo Neruda Prize, and a Guggenheim fellowship. Anteparadise, his second collection, is in part a response to the brutality of the 1973 military coup, during which Zurita was arrested and detained for six weeks in the hold of a cargo ship.

Canto General by Pablo Neruda; translated by Jack Schmitt

Canto General is Neruda’s tenth collection, and it’s considered by many to be his masterpiece. This epic work comprises 300 poems and is more than 15,000 lines long, and offers readers a vast and moving history of the Americas.

Dora Bruder by Patrick Modiano; translated by Joanna Kilmartin

This novel is a kind of literary hybrid in which a number of genres—detective novel, biography, autobiography—are employed to tell the story of Dora, a fifteen-year-old girl who has run away from her Catholic boarding school. Modiano comes across a Missing Persons notice placed by her parents in a French newspaper, and this sparks off a decade-long investigation into Dora’s fate.

Reading Cats and Dogs

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What’s it going to be, animal fans? Do you prefer the daft and drooling devotion of a Dachshund, or would you rather your lap be warmed by a dapper and discerning Tuxedo cat? It’s probably obvious that I’m Team Feline (do you blame me?), but we have a couple of dedicated dog enthusiasts on staff as well—luckily, our brand-spanking-new Melville House order arrived with something for everyone…

Cats and Dogs

Melville House is an independent Brooklyn publisher founded in 2001 by the husband and wife team of writer Dennis Loy Johnson and sculptor Valerie Merians. We proudly stock quite a few of their handsome titles, including the two recent releases below…

Cat Out of Hell by Lynne Truss

From the best-selling author of Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, we have the story of Alec Charlesworth, a grief-stricken librarian who encounters a talking cat called Roger. This novel is a page-turning mix of comedy and Gothic suspense; there are laugh-out-loud moments mixed in with some genuinely creepy bits (e.g. “Purring was the way they sent people into a trance, you see—and then, when their prey was sort of paralysed and helpless, the cats would set to work with their claws”). Best read with the lights on and the family cat occupied elsewhere.

The Dialogue of the Dogs by Miguel de Cervantes; translated by David Kipen

From chatty cats to conversational canines—Cervantes’ The Dialogue is apparently the first talking-dog story in Western literature. Much like Cat Out of Hell, this novella is a humorous mix of parody and fantasy. It features a syphilitic philanderer who, while recovering in hospital, eavesdrops on two talking guard dogs. The Dialogue first appeared in 1613 in a collection of twelve stories… and, four-hundred years later, I’d wager this is still the only tail tale in which a pair of garrulous Mastiffs discuss the evils of humanity in the form of a Greek dialogue.

New In Store: Copper Canyon

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In celebration of National Poetry Month, we’re offering a stupendously generous 20% OFF ALL POETRY TITLES this April. That means you still have one week to race down to Malvern Books and pick out some verse bargains—and to make your life a little easier, allow me to recommend this trifecta of recent arrivals from Copper Canyon Press…

Copper Canyon

Copper Canyon has been publishing poetry since 1972, and they’ve released over 400 titles. Their impressive list includes renowned and emerging American poets, poetry in translation, anthologies, and re-issues of classic collections. Let’s take a look at three of their outstanding new releases…

Siken is a painter as well as an acclaimed poet, and in War of the Foxes he contemplates the challenges artists and writers face when they seek meaning in their own inventions. This is a rich and thoughtful collection, and a worthy follow-up to the award-winning Crush, his much admired first book.

We’re big fans of Alaskan poet Olena Kalytiak Davis (and in particular her wonderful first book, And Her Soul Out of Nothing), so this new volume of poetry, her first full collection in over ten years, is certainly cause for celebration. In his New Yorker review, Dan Chiasson writes that Davis’ poetry is “at once tawdry and oddly pure,” and suggests that what makes her work so thrilling is the way “it sends us ricocheting from line to line and poem to poem looking for sustenance.” If you’re keen for some brilliant, brutal, deeply intimate verse, be sure to check out The Poem She Didn’t Write…

It’s hardly surprising Frank Stanford has become something of a cult literary figure: he was prolific, enigmatic, and handsome, and he died young, shooting himself in the chest three times following an argument with his wife. However, he’s never quite reached legendary status, in part because his poetry has been hard to track down. Copper Canyon has now remedied this with a comprehensive new collection that includes work from each of Stanford’s published titles (including excerpts from his epic, “The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You”), as well as an abundance of unpublished poems and fragments. What About This is a compelling introduction to a fascinating Southern poet.

Our Lady of the Nile

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Malvern’s mysterious Mr. F—you might remember meeting him a few months ago?—has a review for you of Our Lady of the Nile by Rwandan author Scholastique Mukasonga. It’s a brilliant new novel from Archipelago Books, and it won the prestigious French Voices Grand Prize.

Our Lady of the NileOur Lady of the Nile takes place in a Catholic boarding school for young women in Rwanda, fifteen years before the genocide that killed over a million Tutsi people. It’s a brutal, often humorous tale, centering on the privileged girls attending the school and the conflicts that unravel within the institution and the students. Reminiscent of The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark and Lord of the Flies, with overtones of class and race issues, this is a quick, moving, and enjoyable read.

Malvern Books’ Best of 2014: Fiction

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On Monday we took a look at Malvern’s 2014 poetry bestsellers—now let’s give our prose wonders a turn. Interestingly, the top five fiction sellers come from just two publishers, New Directions (we’ve raved about them before) and A Strange Object, a fantastic local press that was founded just over a year ago… my, how quickly they grow! Check out our customer faves below (they’re in no particular order), then stop by the store and ask to see more of our New Strange Directions Object wares.

Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail by Kelly Luce (A Strange Object; $14.95)

Three ScenariosSet in Japan, the stories that form this extraordinary debut collection are unpredictable, beguiling, and full of the most exquisite, perfectly chosen details.

“Kelly Luce manages the impossible: each story delicate and enormous, intricate, glitteringly beautiful, never less than strange, never less than profound, ten spiderwebs astonishingly spun. Readers: here is your new favorite short story writer.” —Elizabeth McCracken

Our Secret Life in the Movies by Michael McGriff and J. M. Tyree (A Strange Object; $14.95)

Our Strange LifeThrough a series of linked stories featuring a couple of kids coming of age in the ’80s, McGriff and Tyree create an intense—and intensely moving—dream world, and a love letter to cult movies.

“As close to an interactive experience as reading a collection of cutting-edge short fiction can be… An intriguing, frequently affecting experiment that challenges its readers to think anew about sharpening and refracting their memories of both life and art.” —Kirkus Reviews

Miss Lonelyhearts & The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West (New Directions, $14.95)

Miss LonelyheartsTwo classic works of American literature in one stylish volume… what’s not to like? Miss Lonelyhearts was compared by Flannery O’Connor to As I Lay Dying, while The Day of the Locust is regarded by many as the best novel ever written about Hollywood.

“Taken together, these two novels say more about the way we live now––and the things that brought us to our present pass––than any other work of fiction I can think of.” —L.E. Sissman, New Yorker.

The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide, translated by Eric Selland (New Directions; $14.95)

The Guest CatThis is ostensibly a straightforward story about a young couple whose stale relationship perks up following the unexpected arrival of a cat—but The Guest Cat is much more profound, subtle, painful, and enchanting than this twee synopsis would suggest.

“This is a beautiful, ornate read, brimming with philosophical observation, humor and intelligence, leaving the reader anticipating more translated works of Hiraide.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald, translated by Michael Hulse (New Directions; $16.95)

The Rings of SaturnThe most astonishing account you’ll ever read of a long walk through the Suffolk countryside. Through Sebald’s eyes, even the most familiar objects become unsettling and surreal…

“Strange, unquenchable, and serious originality … A brilliantly allusive study of England’s imperial past and the nature of decline and fall, of loss and decay … It is hard to imagine a stranger or more compelling work.” —Robert McCrum, London Observer

Malvern Books’ Best of 2014: Poetry

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Happy New Year, Malvernites! If you’re hoping to start 2015 with some stupendous verse, I suggest you take a look at the five books below—they’re our bestselling poetry titles for 2014 (in no particular order), and any one (or all!) of these lovelies would make a dazzling addition to the discerning poetry fiend’s bookshelf…

31 Poems by Dean Young (Forklift, Ohio; $12)

31 PoemsThe perfect introduction to the work of Dean Young, 31 Poems is both a brilliant collection and a beautiful object. (When it was first published, it appeared in the Best Collected category and the Best Physical Artifact category of Coldfront’s Year in Review.)

“Dean Young’s poems are as entertaining as a three-ring circus and as imaginative as a canvas by Hieronymus Bosch.” —American Academy of Arts and Letters

The Book of Joshua by Zachary Schomburg (Black Ocean; $19.95)

The Book of JoshuaA favorite of Taylor Jacob Pate, Zachary Schomburg writes associative, witty, logic-twisting poems that inhabit a surreal dreamscape.

“The Book of Joshua … ultimately spins its own myths in a book that is built to feel symbolic, but isn’t really a straightforward metaphor for anything because, within the context of this world, these statements are literal. It’s not allegory but finely figured dream.” —Bill Neumire, Heavy Feather Review

Soul in Space by Noelle Kocot (Wave Books; $18)

Soul in SpaceSoul in Space is the sixth collection from the prolific and extraordinarily talented Kocot, who wowed the Malvern audience with her reading of “Poem for the End of Time.”

“Part riddle, part reverie, and part prayer, the brief lyric poems that compose Kocot’s collection inhabit a charged but quotidian space… Kocot arranges the ephemera of the everyday in relation to each other and to the self as though striking a minor chord.” —Publishers Weekly

Storm Toward Morning by Malachi Black (Copper Canyon Press; $17)

Storm Toward MorningWhen asked in an interview to give a one-sentence synopsis of this collection, Malachi summarized it by saying, “There is nothing more truly peculiar, confusing, and surprising than being entirely alive.”

“Formally exacting and creatively expansive, Black is an intensely inquisitive John Donne for the Millennial generation.” —Publishers Weekly

More Wreck More Wreck by Tyler Gobble (Coconut Books; $15)

More Wreck More WreckWe were delighted to launch More Wreck More Wreck (winner of the 2013 Cargill First Book Poetry Prize) at Malvern Books, and we were not the least bit surprised when it proved hugely popular!

“These poems aren’t just one thing, or another, they are instead stuffed with so much energy that they are spilling all over the pages … More Wreck More Wreck is bubbling with the absolutely kick ass beauty of a great imagination let loose.” —Peter Davis