Book Review
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The Afterlife of Anecdotes: A Review of The Belan Deck (2023) by Matt Bucher
By Jay Innis Murray “An attempt to smuggle reality into anything, into a PowerPoint deck.” — The Belan Deck “Plotless. Characterless. Yet seducing the reader into turning pages nonetheless.” — David Markson, This Is Not a Novel The scaffolding of character and plot are here in The Belan Deck, but they can be summed up… Continue reading
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Second-Hand Versions of Me: A Review of Jen Craig’s Wall (2023)
By Jay Innis Murray Wall by Jen Craig from Zerogram Press There was never a moment when you thought you had started on the section of the manuscript where the real part began. – Jen Craig, Panthers and the Museum of Fire … all that inner space one never sees, the brain and heart and… Continue reading
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So Pretty a Dread: A Review of Monstrilio (2023) by Gerardo Sámano Córdova
By Jay Innis Murray Monstrilio from Zando, published March 7, 2023 One of the joys of this literary horror novel is the deft and seemingly effortless way author Gerardo Sámano Córdova manages a sort of thimblerig of relationships and points of view. I don’t mean his concern as a writer is to fool the reader.… Continue reading
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The Empty House on Mulholland: A Review of The Shards by Bret Ellis
By Jay Innis Murray “Pastiche is… blank parody, a statue with blind eyeballs.” – Fredric Jameson “We’re the kids in America.” – Kim Wilde He drives a Mercedes 450 SL on the freeways, around Beverly Hills, and to Palm Springs (American Gigolo). Rich teens in Los Angeles get into unsupervised adult stuff (Less Than Zero).… Continue reading
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A Review of The Last Samurai Reread by Lee Konstantinou
For me, this is a genre of book to be treasured. One sharp critic reads one novel and its context. Columbia University Press has created an entire series called Rereadings (you can find the link to the series here), which over the last two years has featured short books by critics and scholars about such… Continue reading
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The Opposite of Solipsism – A Review of The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty
By Jay Innis Murray “And what is your relation to her?” an Intensive Care Unit receptionist asks a visitor in the last chapter of Tess Gunty’s ambitious and perceptive debut novel The Rabbit Hutch. It’s a question everybody’s been asked by hospital staff, but here is something more, as the question (What Is Your Relation?)… Continue reading
About Talking Big
All posts by Jay Innis Murray.
Always on the lookout for new books to review. Please drop me a line at grashupfer@gmail.com or say hi on Twitter, Mastodon or Blue Sky.
Read my novel here: https://tinyurl.com/p98jtu7c
Recent Posts
- Impossible to Say: A Review of Glantz (2025) by Tobias Ryan
- A Review of The Ten Year Affair by Erin Somers
- Stealing Einstein’s Underpants – A Review of The Delegation (2025) by Avner Landes
- A Review of On the Calculation of Volume 1 (2024) by Solvej Balle
- A Review of The Cannibal Owl (2025) by Aaron Gwyn
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