New Books
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Stealing Einstein’s Underpants – A Review of The Delegation (2025) by Avner Landes
By Jay Innis Murray One of the things that seems to me to be artificial about most fiction is that it pretends as if experience and thought and perception are linear and singular and that we’re thinking and feeling only one way at a certain point in time. You know, some of that is the Continue reading
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A Review of Let the Boys Play (2024) by Nicholas John Turner
By Jay Innis Murray “Firm ground is not available ground.” – – – AR Ammons, “Dunes” Here is a book that does not flinch. Here is a book about suffering. This is my novel of the year for 2024. Let the Boys Play sings a long song of contempt and disgust. It chants of living Continue reading
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I ain’t a mule, Huck: A Review of James (2024) by Percival Everett
By Jay Innis Murray I knew the trickster Ulysses just as early as I knew the wily rabbit of Negro American lore, and I could easily imagine myself a pint-sized Ulysses but hardly a rabbit, no matter how human and resourceful or Negro. And a little later I could imagine myself as Huck Finn Continue reading
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Topography of Terror: A Review of American Abductions by Mauro Javier Cárdenas
By Jay Innis Murray In his 2021 interview with Dustin Illingworth, Mauro Javier Cárdenas teases and waves at the influence of Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape on his then work-in-progress. It’s a delightful back and forth that shows off how Cárdenas thinks about fiction, long sentences, and the influences upon him of authors who came Continue reading
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The Fragile Hammering Bird Heart of Novels: A Review of Like It Matters by Lee Klein
By Jay Innis Murray On Bloomsday in 1963, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space, launching in capsule Vostok 6. She orbited the Earth 48 times before landing successfully. Her call sign was Seagull. From space, she radioed to Soviet mission control, “It is I, Seagull! Everything is fine. I see the Continue reading
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The Secret Engine of the World: A Review of The Fraud (2023) by Zadie Smith
By Jay Innis Murray … whilst coiled behind all gazes the great Worm of Slavery. — Pynchon, Mason & Dixon The curious reader need not wonder why Zadie Smith wrote a historical novel for her sixth, The Fraud, which was published in September of last year. She gave us her reasons. Her career has been Continue reading
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Is a Transcendently Beautiful Place Not to Be Ours? A Review of Ember Days (2024) by Mary Gilliland
By Jay Innis Murray Mary Gilliland is the author of two award-winning poetry collections: The Ruined Walled Castle Garden (2020) and The Devil’s Fools (2022). Her new collection, Ember Days, will be published on March 1 by Cod Hill Press. The question that makes my review’s title is the title of a beautiful poem about Continue reading
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2023 Year in Reading and Reviews
By Jay Innis Murray So, that was 2023. I finished 60 books this year. Some of them were short, but 60 is a high number for me. My website does not seem to generate much browsing. That’s either a bug or a feature. I’ll let somebody else decide, but I’ll use this opportunity to link Continue reading
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Here I recommend Grand Tour (2023) by Elisa Gonzalez
My friend William Flesch writes in the Los Angeles Review of Books, “Elisa Gonzalez may very well be a great poet, and, like all great poets, she is haunted by poetry—the poetry of Homer, of John Ashbery, of… Marilyn Monroe…” This is in his superb review (link at bottom of page) of Grand Tour, the Continue reading
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To See the World Estranged Through Another Writer’s Mind – A Review of Other Minds and Other Stories (2023) by Bennett Sims
By Jay Innis Murray I’m feeling unusually self-conscious as I prepare this appreciation of the new collection of stories from Bennett Sims called Other Minds and Other Stories. See, I’m an underliner. I write in the books I read. I leave, too, significant quantities of margin notes. Some of my book-loving friends have an almost 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
- 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
- A Review of Every Arc Bends Its Radian (2024) by Sergio De La Pava
Talking Big 