Matthew Jackson

FictionHistorical Fiction

Wolves of Winter

Review by Matthew Jackson

With his debut novel, Essex Dogs, popular historian Dan Jones proved that he could take his expertise in medieval history and translate it into compelling, immensely readable fiction. Now, with Wolves of Winter Jones manages to do it again—and then some.

A direct sequel to Essex Dogs, Wolves of Winter picks up on the adventures of a band of soldiers and friends serving in the army of King Edward III in the midst of the Hundred Years War. In the wake of the English victory at the battle of Crecy, the Essex Dogs are convinced they’re going home soon, with pockets full of whatever plunder they’ve managed to scrape together. But the King and his noble allies have other plans. For reasons no one in the army’s rank and file can quite grasp, the English are preparing to lay siege to Calais, a small French port town surrounded by treacherous marshes. So, instead of going home, the Dogs continue on to Calais, even as a man they thought they left in the past creeps up behind them.

Throughout the action, Jones maintains a clear, confident grasp on the historical details, from the weapons the Dogs use to the surprising way that pirates factor into the Calais story. And just as in Essex Dogs, none of that detail ever distracts from the narrative, character development or emotional stakes. Jones’ themes have also matured and deepened, as the mysteries of the siege of Calais offer plenty of new opportunities to explore the futility of war from the Dogs’ perspective. Crecy was such a triumph that to keep fighting feels like an exercise in foolish bravado. As the Essex Dogs descend into the literal quagmire around Calais, they begin pondering the steps that led them to this point, considering whether control over their destinies is possible in a world ruled by those richer and more influential. It’s a study in maturation for an author who was already working at a high level; the added depth never gets in the way of the swashbuckling, epic action of the battles.

Wolves of Winter is another rollicking success for Dan Jones, cementing him as a master of historical fiction and leaving us counting the days until we can read what the Essex Dogs do next.

Wolves of Winter is another rollicking success for Dan Jones, leaving us counting the days until we can read what the Essex Dogs do next.
FictionLiterary Fiction

The Fetishist

Review by Matthew Jackson

Written before her death in 2019, and published with the help of her daughter, Katherine Min’s The Fetishist allows Min to pour out something of herself that we might otherwise have sadly missed. Darkly funny, strangely poignant and sometimes startlingly vicious, The Fetishist is a wonderful novel from an author we lost too soon, and a sweeping yet intimate statement on the impacts of racism and sexism on Asian American women.

Kyoko is a Japanese American rock musician, while Alma is a Korean American cellist whose career was sidelined by illness. Both are tied irrevocably to Daniel, a white man and fellow musician whose pursuit of Asian women seems to have ruined both Alma’s life and the life of Kyoko’s late mother. Shifting between these three characters’ perspectives, Min tells us the captivating, hilariously twisted story of their intertwined lives, from a potential hit song and an infamous affair, to a kidnapping gone wrong.

Min’s prose is simultaneously playful and powerful. She crafts sentences that are somehow able to contain both breathless puns and elegant intonations on the meaning of life. The Fetishist flies on the strength of her words, and that strength transfers into her characters. There’s not a simple narrative here, no firm sense of right and wrong that we can apply to every page. Instead, these complicated, messy characters are lent warmth and gravity in each word, each moment. Kyoko, Alma and Daniel are all searching for meaning, all trying to sort through the regrets they carry and the sins they bear. They feel whole, feel human, and therefore are free to surprise us.

While The Fetishist is many things, surprising is probably the most apt word to describe Min’s posthumous work. This remarkably clever, wickedly incisive little book will keep you hanging on every word and leave you with questions you’ll ponder for days.

Darkly funny, strangely poignant and sometimes startlingly vicious, The Fetishist is a wonderful novel from an author we lost too soon.
FictionHistorical Fiction

The Glutton

Review by Matthew Jackson

There is a particular, fascinating branch of historical fiction devoted to probing the inner depths of individuals so legendary and strange that they border on myths. Such tales can take on all the verisimilitude and tactile detail of more straightforward historical fiction, while also saying something new about the time period depicted and the strange pathways through which we discover the human condition. A.K. Blakemore proves that she is exactly the kind of great storyteller required to pull that off in this tale about one of Revolutionary France’s most puzzling and frightening figures.

The Glutton is the story of Tarare, a young man who became a legend across France in the late 18th century for his seemingly bottomless appetite. Long a fixation for those interested in medical oddities, Tarare’s life is both dark folklore and a documented case of a man who could, and would, eat just about anything. Using contemporary medical accounts of Tarare’s life and condition as a guide, Blakemore picks up this odd man’s story and attempts to chart his journey to gluttony from his impoverished childhood to his days as a street performer to, finally, his death in a hospital bed, overseen by nuns who were both horrified and fascinated by his plight.

Right away, Blakemore walks a fine, brilliant narrative line, establishing Tarare’s infamy in his lifetime, then moving forward with a story that’s simultaneously sympathetic to the character and unflinching in its depiction of how far he’s willing to go in an attempt to sate himself. Though he comes into the world as a sweet, curious boy, he will eventually devour refuse, rotting flesh, and even living flesh. What forces transform Tarare, and what do they say about the society into which he was born?

Blakemore examines these questions while drawing readers deep into the entertaining, propulsive story at the book’s core. The great gift of this novel is that Blakemore somehow never loses sight of the warm, thrumming humanity that is Tarare. He’s a man, he’s a monster, he’s a frightened boy and he’s a living myth. All of these aspects live through Blakemore’s lyrical, sweeping prose, making The Glutton a stunning, mesmeric novel of uncommon power.

The great gift of this stunning, mesmeric novel is that Blakemore never loses sight of the warm, thrumming humanity that is Tarare. He's a man, he's a monster, he's a frightened boy, and he's a living myth.
FictionHistorical Fiction

Essex Dogs

Review by Matthew Jackson

For the last decade, Dan Jones has been one of the brightest voices in popular nonfiction and a go-to expert on all things medieval. If you want a thorough yet entertaining look at the making of the Magna Carta, for example, or the rise and fall of the Knights Templar, Jones is one of the first authors you should reach for. But making the leap from nonfiction to fiction isn’t easy, which means Jones’ debut novel carries an air of suspense, even among his longtime fans, to see if he can pull off the transition.

Happily, Essex Dogs is a thoroughly enjoyable achievement that brings medieval warriors to bright, crackling life. The titular Essex Dogs are a group of English mercenaries who land on the beaches of Normandy in 1346, just a few years into the conflict that will eventually be known as the Hundred Years’ War. Like every other English fighter on the beaches, the Dogs seek fortune and glory as hired swords for King Edward III, who’s determined to reclaim France for his domain by any means necessary. But while the nobles leading the army are bent toward that purpose, the everyday work of keeping the war machine going falls to men like the Dogs, whose triumphs and struggles make up the meat of Jones’ intimate story. 

The Essex Dogs are anchored by their leader, Loveday, who leads readers through the humdrum days of marching and the often terrifying up-close brutality of real war when the French stop retreating and start defending. There is, of course, an instant credibility to it all that stems from Jones’ other work, but what makes Essex Dogs especially impressive is his focus on character. Loveday and his comrades Pismire, Scotsman, Father and the rest are the true centerpieces of this story, not the war unfolding in the background. Jones keenly understands this, and it allows him to craft a remarkable story about the price of war and the way violence weighs on men’s souls while never losing sight of the sweeping, epic scale of his narrative. 

Rich in historical detail and told in tight, endearing prose, Essex Dogs is a historical fiction triumph for both longtime Jones fans and newcomers. It belongs on the reading list of every medieval history buff.

Rich in historical detail and told in tight, endearing prose, Essex Dogs is a historical fiction triumph for both longtime Jones fans and newcomers, and belongs on the reading list of every medieval history buff.
FictionCrime Fiction

Panther Gap

Review by Matthew Jackson

James A. McLaughlin’s deeply evocative writing in Bearskin (2018) earned him an Edgar Award for best first novel, and now he turns his attention from Appalachia to Colorado for an even more ambitious second novel. The title of Panther Gap suggests something savage and spiritual within its pages, and once you begin, you’ll discover a thriller rich with character detail, metaphor and even a bit of magic.

Flashbacks scattered throughout the novel reveal the difficult, sometimes mystical childhood of siblings Bowman and Summer. They grew up on a ranch known as Panther Gap, where their father kept them off the grid and taught them to work the family land, sometimes at a great personal price. In the present, Bowman has become a wanderer obsessed with the natural wonders of the world, while Summer has stayed behind to try and keep Panther Gap afloat with the help of her uncles. 

Everything changes when Summer gets a call about a mysterious inheritance in a secret overseas bank account, something tied to their grandfather’s misadventures in organized crime. The money could save Panther Gap, but other forces are vying for the windfall—forces that could jeopardize Bowman and Summer’s reunion and destroy their complicated family legacy.

What’s immediately striking about Panther Gap is how firmly McLaughlin grasps his characters, not in the sense that he’s a master puppeteer who won’t let them stray, but in that he seems to know every inch of their souls. Even when the narrative blasts off into the thriller stratosphere, he never loses his touch. It’s a remarkably assured novel, with every page enriched by McLaughlin’s confidence in these characters.

Panther Gap comes alive in McLaughlin’s hands, growing and shifting until, by the end, you feel like you could step right into it. It certainly evokes the crime novels of Elmore Leonard and George Pelecanos but, most importantly, reaffirms McLaughlin’s own bright, confident voice.

Panther Gap comes alive in James A. McLaughlin’s hands, growing and shifting until, by the end, you feel like you could step right into it.
FictionHistorical Fiction

The Gifts

Review by Matthew Jackson

Acclaimed children’s author Liz Hyder’s first novel for adults has a richness of prose that immediately hooks readers and allows deep immersion within its strange world. Set in England in 1840, The Gifts is a remarkable, unpredictable tale of ambition, faith and survival, a blend of historical fiction and fantasy from a deft storyteller.

Unexpected magical occurrences cause the lives of four women to intertwine: distressed wife and artist Annie, renegade naturalist Etta, drifting seeker Natalya and aspiring writer Mary. As the story opens, a woman’s corpse is pulled from the Thames River, and from its back sprout what appear to be wings. This immediately attracts the eye of Annie’s husband, Edward, an ambitious surgeon frustrated by the brighter spotlight shone on his flashier colleagues. In this “fallen angel,” Edward sees his entire future in the form of a gift from God, and now he wants to get his hands on a living specimen. But at what cost does success come for Edward, and how does his relentless pursuit of notoriety and fortune change the lives of each of the four women?

Hyder’s novel unfolds through a series of short chapters that function like a sequence of character studies, each of which displays such a tight grasp on detail and emotional range that it could function as a short story. We learn so much through a single visit to Annie’s ornate house or Etta’s ramshackle country cabin. We glean tremendous depth from Mary’s sense of duty and how it conflicts with her own ambitions. Each of the women is so finely drawn that we’re immediately invested not just in their lives but also in the ways they see the world, and how their perspectives shift as the events of the novel start to fall into place. Once the magical elements kick in and wings begin to unfurl, Hyder’s gift for narrative propulsion blends with this character depth to create a sumptuous reading experience.

The Gifts is a remarkable, unpredictable tale of ambition, faith and survival, a blend of historical fiction and fantasy from a deft storyteller.
FictionFamily Drama

All-Night Pharmacy

Review by Matthew Jackson

A Los Angeles dive bar packed with personalities. A sibling dynamic that runs the gamut from nourishing to obliterating. A mysterious woman who promises to be a kind of guru to a narrator on the brink of self-destruction. All this and more can be found in Ruth Madievsky’s debut novel, an exploded view of a conflicted young woman’s brain that delivers page after page of witty, often heartbreaking narration.

The unnamed protagonist of All-Night Pharmacy is a teenage girl just out of high school who’s swept up in the life and adventures of her older sister, Debbie, a stripper and party girl who encourages her younger sibling to go out and live, no matter the consequences. But in between swallowing random pills and taking shots at a local bar called Salvation, the narrator begins to wonder if Debbie is anything more than a master manipulator and chaos agent. When their clash of personalities turns bloody, Debbie disappears, but this is only the beginning of the narrator’s search for meaning and understanding. 

With her sister gone, the narrator turns to Sasha, a charming and spellbinding woman who offers spiritual and psychic guidance—an appealing offer for the narrator, whose life has become a wormhole of pills, bad decisions and confusion about her sister’s disappearance. Together Sasha and the narrator embark on a sexual, psychological and emotional awakening.

The tensions of the narrator’s life and the persistent sense of searching that permeates her brain make All-Night Pharmacy hum with energy from the very first page, imbuing Madievsky’s narrative with a sense of darkly comic unpredictability that never overwhelms the emotional beats of her character’s journey. Along the way, the novel touches on the scar tissue of growing up in the former Soviet Union, the trauma of European Jews in the 20th century and the calculated risks that come with opioid addiction and selling drugs. Madievsky is also a poet, and her knack for crafting imagery is on full display, merging the mundane and the profound to ensure her novel is thrilling all the way down to a sentence level.

Madievsky displays tremendous storytelling range, capturing all that is bitter and hilarious, heartbreaking and enlightening, wise and foolish within the well-developed mind of a single central character.

Debut novelist Ruth Madievsky displays tremendous storytelling range, capturing all that is bitter and hilarious, heartbreaking and enlightening, wise and foolish within the well-developed mind of a single central character.
FictionLiterary Fiction

Do You Remember Being Born?

Review by Matthew Jackson

Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning author Sean Michaels (Us Conductors) achieves an astonishing level of narrative, emotional and psychological density with his tightly focused novel Do You Remember Being Born? which centers on two minds—one human, one artificial intelligence—as they try to do something that’s never been done before: write a poem together. With this edgy 21st-century hook, Michaels maps the interior of a great human mind, and raises relevant questions about AI and the nature of creativity.

Michaels’ narrator, Marian Ffarmer, is an aging poet whose reputation is secure, but whose finances are not. She does well enough to get by on her own, but not well enough to help her son buy the house of his dreams. In an effort to provide for a child from whom she’s always felt a little distant, Marian takes an unusual assignment: visit a towering tech company in California and work with their newly designed poetry AI to craft a long poem that will be the first of its kind. It’s a game-changing collaboration, and her participation would be an endorsement from a major poetic figure.

So Marian heads out to meet Charlotte, the poetry-composing software who’s eager to work but not necessarily able to write the kinds of stanzas Marian considers good, meaningful poetry. Over the course of a single week, as other people—including an endearing but enigmatic driver and an up-and-coming fellow poet—drift in and out of the picture, Marian and Charlotte get to know each other and the way they work together.

If you’re going to narrate your novel from the point of view of a poet, you must be able to think like one, and this is where Do You Remember Being Born? achieves its greatest success. Sentence by sentence, line by line, Michaels builds a beautiful structure with dizzying, surprising imagery, conjuring metaphors that will leave you with a smile and lingering questions.

Beyond that, though, the novel is after something bigger, probing concerns about art that humans have struggled with for millennia while also attempting to comprehend Michaels’ own AI bot that he specifically programmed to assist in writing this novel. Michaels doesn’t necessarily provide answers, but it doesn’t seem like he’s out to write a grand theory of artificial intelligence and creativity. Rather, he’s created a controversial novel in the midst of a hot debate, sure to keep us hooked and asking our own questions. In that regard, Do You Remember Being Born? is a captivating success.

If you're going to narrate your novel from the point of view of a poet, you must be able to think like one, and this is where Do You Remember Being Born? achieves its greatest success.
FictionSpeculative FictionLiterary Fiction

Death Valley

Review by Matthew Jackson

There’s a peculiar art to writing a novel that’s as inwardly focused as Death Valley the latest book from author and poet Melissa Broder (Milk Fed). While the narrative thrust of the story is determined by its first-person narrator’s outward wanderings, it is what’s going on inside her heart and soul that delivers the real, satisfying emotional punch. To pull that punch off takes prose that’s both memorable and relatable, as well as a narrator with an inner life that is fulfilling both thematically and narratively. That Death Valley manages this is enough to make it a thoroughly engrossing literary achievement—even before factoring in Broder’s humor, gift for linguistic flourishes and command of character.

Broder’s narrator is an author who heads to a desert hotel to work on her next book, leaving multiple personal crises back home in Los Angeles. Her father is still clinging to life in a hospital bed months after suffering an accident, while her husband’s chronic illness keeps him largely housebound and seems to be strengthening. On a short hike through the desert, the narrator finds a giant cactus with a wound in its side that feels like a doorway worth stepping through. What happens after she steps into the cactus is, of course, an entirely new journey, but Broder keeps it just as relatable even as her narrator begins shaping conversations between inanimate objects and seeing visions of the past and future colliding in her mind.

Through the voice of our nameless narrator, Broder immediately and thrillingly carves out a personality that’s equal parts emotional and wry; wise and impulsive. Even when she’s simply walking the halls of a Best Western, we feel like we understand this woman and grasp how her mind is being pulled in multiple directions at once.

Rich with observations about the shape of stories and the ways in which we center ourselves even in the narratives of other people, Death Valley is an exhilarating meditation on death, life, survival and how we use stories to get us through it all. It’s a triumph for Broder and an intensely intimate ride for readers.

Death Valley is an exhilarating meditation on death, life, survival and how we use stories to get us through it all.
FictionHistorical Fiction

The Three Lives of Alix St. Pierre

Review by Matthew Jackson

Historical fiction presents a certain narrative highwire act in and of itself, and each author confronts the challenge of weaving fictional stories into real historical events differently. No matter the approach, though, the balance of verisimilitude and invention is paramount. With The Three Lives of Alix St. Pierre, Natasha Lester takes on that challenge and more, producing a remarkable novel that walks in multiple worlds during a pivotal moment in time. 

The title character, an American orphan who attended a Swiss boarding school on a scholarship, grows into a woman determined to prove herself in any theater in which she’s asked to do battle. Over the course of Lester’s novel, which jumps from France to Switzerland to Italy and beyond during the 1940s, we see Alix join the staff of Harper’s Bazaar, secretly work for the U.S. Office of Strategic Services and, in postwar Paris, take up a position at a new fashion house run by Christian Dior. But even as her high-fashion dreams seem to be coming true, Alix realizes that the ghosts of war are not done with her yet. 

Lester’s ambitious premise, placing her protagonist at the center of both covert work during World War II and the founding of one of the most recognizable fashion brands in the world, is both daring and compelling. It’s easy to imagine that her novel could have shifted too far into espionage and therefore dimmed the light on the world of haute couture, or that the fashion might have outshined the world of spies and code names. But readers can put such worries to rest, thanks to Lester’s command of her narrative and deep grasp of her protagonist. Through tight, page-turning prose and a richly developed view of 1940s Europe, Lester weaves a spellbinding portrait of a woman who knows how to survive—and how to win. 

Alix is such a strong central character that the rest of the narrative shapes itself to her like a well-tailored gown, making The Three Lives of Alix St. Pierre a wonderfully human and utterly gripping work of historical fiction.

Natasha Lester’s central character is so strong that the rest of the narrative shapes itself to her like a well-tailored gown, making The Three Lives of Alix St. Pierre a wonderfully human and utterly gripping work of historical fiction.
FictionComing of Age

The Night Ship

Review by Matthew Jackson

Jess Kidd’s novels have an uncommonly stunning tactile quality, plunging the reader headlong into worlds that are both recognizable and strange, where just about anything seems possible. Her fourth book, The Night Ship, is the latest example of this gift. Part historical fiction, part coming-of-age story, it’s an elegantly told tale about two young people whose lives are divided by nearly four centuries but intertwined by circumstance, fate and one famous shipwreck. 

In the early 17th century, a girl named Mayken is on board the Batavia with her nursemaid, bound for the Dutch East Indies. Mayken isn’t interested in being a “fine young lady” for the duration of the voyage. She’d rather explore the underbelly of the ship and learn about the dark things lurking within the vessel. 

Centuries later, in the 1980s, a boy named Gil comes to the island where the Batavia crashed. Living with his detached uncle, Gil feels adrift and lonely. He finds comfort in new friendships and becomes fascinated by the story of the notorious shipwreck. 

Along the way, both children find something mythic to pursue. For Mayken, it’s a monster that may or may not be prowling the bowels of the ship. For Gil, it’s the ghost of a girl who wanders the island. 

Kidd develops these parallel narratives delicately and intricately, with a precision that’s offset by the emotional intensity of her writing. In the early chapters, she makes stylistic connections between Gil and Mayken within the prose itself, then builds upon these initial associations as the story progresses. It’s an impressive juggling act, especially because neither Gil’s story nor Mayken’s ever undermines the other. Instead, they nourish each other, guided along by Kidd’s deft stylistic flourishes. From the smells of the ship to the texture of the kitchen counter in Gil’s new home, it’s all deeply immersive. And through it all, magic always feels just around the corner. 

Whether you’re a fan of ghost stories, historical novels or both, The Night Ship stands a good chance of sweeping you along in its wake. 

Whether you're a fan of ghost stories, historical novels or both, The Night Ship stands a good chance of sweeping you along in its wake.
FictionGraphic Novels & Comics

Keeping Two

Review by Matthew Jackson

Jordan Crane’s graphic novel Keeping Two, which took him 20 years to complete, pays very strict attention to form. Over the course of 300-plus pages, Crane rarely strays from a simple six-panel grid, arranging the action in neat squares that move down and across the page with an almost mesmeric energy and speed. With this structure, a rhythm builds, as does an understanding between cartoonist and reader, so that when Crane begins to blur the lines between past and present, reality and memory, truth and imagination, you lean forward and hold on for one of the most memorable comics-driven rides of the year. 

Keeping Two follows a couple in the midst of what seems to be a minor argument, driven in part by a book the pair read aloud to each other during a long car trip. This book-within-the-book is about a couple coping with a profound loss, and the story’s themes of heartbreak and recovery immediately impact the lives of the couple reading it. They begin to imagine tragedies unfolding in their own reality, tragedies that may turn out to be all too close. 

Crane uses vibrant, hypnotic color, with bright greens suggesting life, growth and rebirth but also illness, nausea and unease. As the story swings between these two tonal poles, Crane’s intense focus on form and composition allows him to transition seamlessly between perspectives, often within the space of a single panel. The boyfriend’s household chore becomes his girlfriend’s reading life, becomes the life of the story she’s paging through and then back again—and the reader is never lost in these shifts. It all feels like part of an ever-fluctuating meditation on life, loss, love and all the states of uncertainty, panic and longing in between. 

Beautifully realized and assembled, Keeping Two is a remarkable work and one of the year’s best graphic novels.

When Jordan Crane begins to blur the lines between past and present, reality and memory, truth and imagination, you must lean forward and hold on for one of the most memorable comics-driven rides of the year.
FictionGraphic Novels & Comics

Acting Class

Review by Matthew Jackson

Ten wayward people walk into an acting class, including a married couple who finds their relationship growing stale, a single mother who worries she’s not good enough and a man convinced he needs to be more assertive at work. In the class, a man named John Smith promises to draw out who each person really is, allowing them to reinvent themselves in the realm of make-believe so they can reshape their realities outside the classroom.

It’s this straightforward catalyst that launches Nick Drnaso’s mesmerizing graphic novel (after Sabrina, a finalist for the Booker Prize). But Acting Class is interested in more than just following a set of characters as they gain a new lease on life. Through clean, minimalist linework, Drnaso builds a world we think we understand. Then, slowly and methodically, he breaks it all down—and with it, our understanding of the human condition.

Certain imagery in Acting Class conjures up the poseable nature of toys, such as vignettes framed in cutesy, brightly colored storybook motifs, or doll heads surrounding a character’s portrait. As the students work to apply Smith’s teachings to their lives, Drnaso visually and narratively blurs the line between fantasy and fiction. Party “scenes” in the class become actual parties, with scope and dimension to match. In the same way, the characters begin to feel the class’ sense of play and fun blending with their own real-world desires, needs and insecurities. Exercises and experiments become charged with emotion, and make-believe becomes shockingly real.

As Drnaso interrogates the ways in which we pretend, pose and allow ourselves to be the playthings of others and society at large—whether we want to admit it or not—Acting Class becomes a stirring, incisive exploration of human nature.

Nick Drnaso builds a world we think we understand. Then, methodically and slowly, he breaks it all down—and with it, our understanding of the human condition.

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