We often associate the phrase “campus novel” with coming-of-age stories set in the constructed reality of a cloistered campus bubble (which is frequently a microcosm for the wider world). These narratives tend to have a built-in sense of urgency thanks to their semester-based timeline, and they often take the form of a love story, traditional or not. But for many of today’s students, the stakes are higher. And now, those stakes are starting to appear on the page.
Rarely do I buy a book because I was seduced by the summary on the back or inside flap. As a reader, I don’t find such text all that relevant. I’ll skim it if I’m browsing in a bookstore or on a retail page—just enough to get the general contours. But lately, what used to be passive avoidance has evolved into a deliberate stance: these days, I refuse to read the jacket copy in full unless I absolutely have to. Jacket copy offers neither an effective barometer for predicting what I love nor reliable protection from buying things I regret. It is reductive, misleading, and—I have decided—none of my business.
This is the chapter’s usual fate, to be considered dully expedient but embarrassingly common, the musty old furniture of the book. We cannot entirely forget chapters because we do not ever really have to learn about them. The conventionality of the chapter places it in the middle of a spectrum of form: too ordinary to be easily apparent as a particular aesthetic method or choice, too necessary to eliminate in the name of an antiformal freedom that claims to speak on behalf of pure “life.” That intermediate position is a place, we might say, where form’s deliberate artifice and life’s unruly vibrancy mix most intimately. The chapter has one foot in both restriction and freedom, diluting the force of both: a not very severe restriction, a somewhat circumscribed freedom.
I felt gray and empty. This must be the feeling, I realized, of life trying to leave you. Watching someone, it’s hard to predict when that exact moment might start. But doctors see it unfold: The patient loses consciousness, their heartbeat slows, and the march toward death begins. When this happens on my watch, I spring into action while muttering to myself, Fuck, no.
Now the diminished blood flow to my brain made it hard to think. Nothing to do but remain calm. I’m sure they know they need to hurry.
No one questions that Juárez is the birthplace of burritos, though there are competing origin stories. Some attribute their creation to Juan Mendez, who sold guisados wrapped in flour tortillas from a donkey-pulled buggy — a burrito — during the Mexican Revolution. Others say they were born of the workers who took these wraps on the go and then called them burritos because they resembled the rolled blankets that sat atop donkeys in the fields. Some say they were named after children who helped women carry their shopping — endearingly nicknamed burritos — and paid with these wraps.
Both cities strive to maintain and preserve a purist burrito tradition while defining a fine burrito experience. Yet it is hard to deny that there is a friendly but deep rivalry.
McBride effortlessly transports us to another time and place. A musician as well as a writer, he is clearly at home in this period and milieu – his father was African American, his mother a Jewish immigrant from Poland. Every member of his diverse cast earns their place in this epic tale. McBride’s plotting is intricate but deftly handled, his rich characterisation and attention to detail are impressive, his compassion exemplary.
Sims presents an interesting collection of psychologically unnerving stories with unreliable narrators galore. If you’re in the mood for a more heady read, this one will be right up your alley.
Photographer Diego Vourakis’s images brim with radiance and warmth – the radiance of love and the heat of the sun. De Cara Al Sol, which translates to ‘Facing the Sun’ in English, is a fitting title for his debut photo book, which features a collection of images taken in Cuba between February 2020 and April 2023. A deeply personal ode to the tenacity of the Cuban spirit, the book’s title derives from the final lines of the poem Yo quiero salir del mundo (‘I Wish to Leave the World’) by Cuban national hero José Martí: “¡Yo soy bueno, y como bueno / Moriré de cara al sol!” (“I am good, and like a good thing / I will die with my face to the sun!”)