Reviews – Page 5 – The Greene Street Review

A Poet Reflects on Friendship and Hope in “What You Have Heard is True”

By Nicolette Natale

It begins with a stranger in a white Toyota Hiace with an El Salvador license plate, the car that pulls up outside poet Carolyn Forché’s house in California. It is the 1970s, and she is needed, the stranger tells her. El Salvador is about to go to war, and she needs to bear witness, to make people in North America understand.

The stranger is Leonel Gomez Vides, and he is central to Carolyn Forché’s riveting memoir, “What You Have Heard Is True,” a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award for non-fiction. As readers we understand that Gomez Vides deliberately presents himself as a mystery; he is a man who has posters of both Che Guevara and Mussolini in one of his homes so as not to reveal his political leanings, at least on the surface level.

“On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” Reads Like A Daydream

By Minahil Salam

In 2014, Ocean Vuong’s poem, “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous,” was published in Poetry Magazine. It is a multi-part poem that focuses on particular life events and the gripping emotion behind them. In June, the author’s breathtaking novel of the same name was published by Penguin Press. The whole novel is addressed to the main character Little Dog’s mother (who cannot read), which positions it as a one-sided letter. A confession, of sorts, without the “audience” ever being able to read it. It is raw, intense, and honest.

Re-encountering “The Stranger”: A Review of “The Meursault Investigation”

The Meursault Investigation book cover By Cora Lee Womble-Miesner

Some authors can put their ear to a novel and hear what is being smothered underneath: the flip side of a coin, the antagonist’s backstory. In reimagining a book from a different perspective, an author can shape a new interpretation of a classic text. What “Wide Sargasso Sea” is to “Jane Eyre,” Kamel Daoud’s “The Meursault Investigation” is to Albert Camus’s “The Stranger.” Daoud lends a penetrating new angle to the philosophical novel by writing from the perspective of Harun, the brother of the Arab man that Meursault kills, voicing the aftermath of this death on their family and community and the torment caused by the victim’s unnaming in the media coverage and “memoir” that followed. In this impassioned retelling, “The Stranger” is not a novel, but Meursault’s own non-fiction recounting of his crimes which propelled him into fame, making him a household name, while Harun’s murdered brother, Musa, is ignored and forgotten by the public eye. The narrator denounces Meursault, saying, “If he hadn’t killed and written, nobody would have remembered him.”

“I Was Made to Make A Sound”: on Rachel Zucker’s multimedia “SoundMachine”

Cover of "Sound Machine" by Rachel Zucker

By Hannah Ho

You are sitting in a subway car on your way to work. This early, people are either clutching coffees with blank stares or are resting, eyes closed, sinking into themselves for just a little longer before having to face the day. Virtually everyone has headphones. Some absently nod along to music; you hear the muffled beat of the person next to you and, frowning, turn up your own podcast. Once above ground, you are greeted by the street’s cacophony of honks and sirens, brakes, and rumbling bus engines. A passing cyclist blasts rap from a speaker strapped to his backpack. You increase the volume another notch. Work: phones ringing, clattering keyboards, the ding of a microwave. On your way home, more sirens. The clamor of happy hour more fervent by the minute. You fall asleep to Netflix or maybe a guided meditation, depending on your mood.

“The Joker” is a Shallow Masquerade

By Sonali Mathur

“The Joker” is the most beautiful thing you’ll see this year. Not because of the depth of Joaquin Phoenix’s take on the supervillain or because of its nuanced portrayal of someone with mental illness, but because every one of Todd Phillips’s shots is so aesthetically pleasing, even the ones where Phoenix is kicking a trash can, being kicked himself, or shooting innocent people. Every shot is exquisite, in shades of red, green, brown, yellow, and black, so stylish I want to hang up stills from the film in my room.

Yiyun Li Grapples with Loss in “Where Reasons End”

Cover of "Where Reasons End" by Yiyun Li

By Freddy Caione

Yiyun Li, in her most recent novel, “Where Reasons End,” delves into the pain of losing her 16-year-old son to suicide. Narrated by a mother whose son has recently taken his own life, this heartfelt book becomes the only remaining medium through which Li can converse with her child. Li writes, “We once gave Nikolai a life of flesh and blood; and I’m doing It over again, this time by words.” She creates a moment outside of the liminal journey of life towards death in order to convey a world outside of time – “a world made up by words, and words only. No images, no sounds.”

The Power of Sex: C.S. Pacat’s “Captive Prince”

By Oliver Fosten Book cover of Captive Prince

It’s easy to expect a quick, smutty novel when picking up “Captive Prince” by C.S. Pacat, the first of a series comprised of three books and four short stories. Beyond the usual warning on the jacket that the book is for mature audiences only, the dramatis personae make it explicitly clear how central dominant and submissive dynamics are to the plot. Let’s not kid ourselves here: this novel is about sex, just not in the way I was remotely expecting. There’s no ripping off of lacy shirts or questionable absence of lube just as there are no tender embraces or rough moments of unhinged passion. Nope, all the horizontal monster-mashing here is about control, gain, and putting more at risk than just the well-being of your genitals.

The Gut-Punch of “Conversation With Friends”

Cover of "Conversations With Friends" by Sally Rooney

By Alice Gelber

“I’m just not very emotional,” says Frances, the cool and somewhat masochistic narrator of Sally Rooney’s debut novel, “Conversations With Friends.” To this, her best friend, and ex-girlfriend, Bobbi, responds, “I don’t think ‘unemotional’ is a quality someone can have.” While Frances spends much of “Conversations with Friends convincing us that she is detached, impersonal, and unfeeling, every line of Rooney’s first novel feels like a punch, leaving the reader drained, but somehow begging for more. Her spartan sentences and nonchalant dialogue–free from quotation marks–disguise the torturous emotional undercurrent that runs through the novel. And, like Frances, the narrative moves with the pain, sometimes enjoying it, sometimes despising it, but always submitting to it.