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NonfictionFood & DrinkBiography

Chop Fry Watch Learn

Review by Yi Jiang

Michelle T. King’s relationship with Fu Pei-mei began in childhood, with the constant presence of Pei Mei’s Chinese Cook Book in her parents’ kitchen. She did not realize the extent of Fu’s impact or fame as the host of a beloved, long-running cooking show in Taiwan until years later. In Chop Fry Watch Learn: Fu Pei-mei and the Making of Modern Chinese Food, this personal connection with Fu allows King, a “Chinese American by way of Taiwan” (how King depicts the complexity of her cultural identity), to illuminate the often misunderstood nuances within the relationship between food and “a people like China’s—riven by decades of war, dislocation, upheaval, and migration.” As King states, food is not simply a comforting taste of home, but “a fickle mistress: a poor approximation of a beloved dish may simply remind you of everything you have lost.”

King weaves history lessons, personal anecdotes and firsthand interviews into the thoroughly researched Chop Fry Watch Learn in order to paint the extent of Fu’s legacy. It’s a tremendous undertaking, which King tackles head-on as she cycles through a vast number of subjects, ranging from historical Chinese attitudes towards food and the women cooking, to the complicated relationship between Taiwan and China throughout the 20th century, to the muddiness of diaspora identity, to broader ideas surrounding domestic labor, feminism and globalization. King argues that food binds it all together, and readers are sure to find her diligent biography compelling.

Michelle T. King’s Chop Fry Watch Learn is an engrossing biography of famed cookbook author Fu Pei-mei.
NonfictionHistory

Chamber Divers

Review by Anne Bartlett

June 1939: British naval sub HMS Thetis sinks in sea trials. Ninety-nine people die. August 1942: Allied forces raid the coastal town of Dieppe in German-occupied France. Thousands are killed, captured or wounded, in part because coastal scouting was minimal. September 1942: British-manned torpedoes attack German battleship Tirpitz. All crewmen are captured or killed. Catastrophes have a way of concentrating the mind: Do it right next time. Luckily for the Allies in World War II, a group of scientists in London risked their lives in secret pressure chamber “dives” to give future underwater and amphibious missions better odds.

Author Rachel Lance is a biomedical engineer and blast injury specialist who has worked on underwater equipment for the U.S. Navy, making her unusually suited to unveil the forgotten story of these scientists in Chamber Divers: The Untold Story of the D-Day Scientists Who Changed Special Operations Forever.

Their project at University College London was led by J.B.S. Haldane, a brilliant, annoying eccentric who hired scientists shunned by others, among them Jewish refugees, women and Communist sympathizers. As the bombs in the Blitz exploded around them, these scientists subjected themselves again and again to dangerous pressure in chambers that simulated deep underwater dives in order to design more effective breathing equipment for submarine crews, frogmen and torpedo riders.

Relying on their experiment notes, Lance takes us inside the metal tubes where scientists suffered life-threatening injuries. She explores their backgrounds and relationships, which included a love affair between Haldane and research colleague Helen Spurway. And she ranges throughout combat zones to show us the dangers of underwater action, from the perspective of individual combatants on both sides. But Lance’s singular strength is her lucid explanations of the complex science behind the experiments, making it accessible to untrained readers. Lance also uncovers the combination of official secrecy, prejudice against outsiders and bureaucratic skullduggery that obscured this story until now.

Lance begins her book with the Dieppe disaster and ends with D-Day—an Allied triumph that might have gone badly wrong without the chamber divers’ dedication and resilience. Chamber Divers is a necessary reminder that not all war heroes were on the front lines.

In Chamber Divers, Rachel Lance uncovers the Navy scientists who risked their lives to improve the odds of underwater and amphibious missions in World War II.
Science Fiction & FantasyFantasy

Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea

Review by Nicole Brinkley

When royal guard Reyna almost dies in service of wicked Queen Tilaine, she decides that it’s time to hang up her boots and take up an offer from her longtime girlfriend, Kianthe, to run away and open a bookshop. Is it technically treason? Yes, but Reyna is an expert swordsperson and Kianthe is the Arcandor, the most powerful mage in the world. With their talents, they’re sure they can stay beneath the queen’s radar.

Together, the two women flee to Tawney, a tiny mountain town on the border of the Queendom. Despite being plagued with dragon attacks and bandits, it offers the perfect sanctuary for the couple to craft their dream store, which features wooden floors, abundant plant life, a lending library of books and a wide selection of teas. As long as they stick to their pseudonyms and fake backstories, they should be fine. But the town is full of mishaps and mysteries, and the couple can’t help but stick their noses into everything. Did the previous town leaders steal dragon eggs? Who is sending aspiring kid bandits to their store? And most importantly: Can Reyna and Kianthe make this strange new life work?

Rebecca Thorne’s Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea is a fantasy for readers itching for soft escapism above all else. There’s a creative world around Reyna and Kianthe, but it’s primarily a backdrop as Thorne focuses on the townsfolk of Tawney and the gentle emotional drama of her central couple. Despite the illusion of high stakes, problems big and small are quickly fixed or hand-waved away. Though the couple frets about money, repairs and inventory are purchased with funds to spare; larger issues, from the murderous queen to the raiding dragons, remain in the background and are resolved with ease. Even spats between Kianthe and Reyna are swiftly and affectionately settled as they reassure each other that they’ve made the right decision and that their love, like Kianthe’s ever-flame, will never fade. 

Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea is an ambling romantic adventure for those who prefer episodic, sentimental stories. Fans of emotionally-driven tabletop games like Wanderhome and cozy fantasies like Legends & Lattes will find this a soothing addition to their shelves.

Rebecca Thorne’s Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea is a romantic fantasy for readers itching for soft escapism above all else.
FictionLiterary Fiction

Blue Ruin

Review by Michael Magras

A well-stocked bookstore would have no trouble filling an entire section with novels about art and artists, from Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray to Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye. Even connoisseurs of art-themed fiction, however, are unlikely to have encountered a protagonist like Jay Gates, the down-on-his-luck artist at the center of Hari Kunzru’s brilliant new novel, Blue Ruin. For anyone who has tried their hand at creating art, Blue Ruin offers satisfying criticisms of the capricious industry’s spotty record of anointing winners and losers.

Jay is a British man of Jamaican ancestry in his 40s, who was once a promising art student. At the start of the novel, he’s a COVID-19 survivor and undocumented immigrant in upstate New York, sleeping in his beat-up car and eking out a living by delivering groceries.

On one delivery to a craftsman cottage overlooking a lake at the end of a mile-long driveway, the masked person awaiting his arrival turns out to be Alice, a woman who was briefly Jay’s girlfriend in art school. Alice left Jay for his best friend, Rob, and Alice and Rob have now been married for 15 years. After Jay collapses from fatigue, Alice invites him to stay in a barn on the property until he recovers. Also isolating there are Marshal, Rob’s gallerist, who espouses conspiracy theories and calls COVID-19 “a Chinese bioweapon”; and Nicole, Marshal’s 20-something “trophy girlfriend.”

Coincidence is a dangerous narrative tool to mess around with, but Kunzru pulls it off in Blue Ruin thanks to the subtle characterizations and intricate layers with which he expands his premise. Buried resentments and jettisoned ambitions come to the fore as Kunzru explores themes of racism, opportunism and the inequities of privilege and hardship. The result is an exceptional work that finds new variations on the familiar chestnut that people aren’t always what they seem.

For anyone who has tried their hand at creating art, Hari Kunzru’s brilliant new novel, Blue Ruin, offers satisfying criticisms of the capricious industry’s spotty record of anointing winners and losers.
RomanceFantasy Romance

Blood on the Tide

Review by Amanda Diehl

Bestselling author Katee Robert’s Crimson Sails series returns with Blood on the Tide, which picks up right where its predecessor, Hunt on Dark Waters, left off. In another sexy, seafaring adventure, a vampire teams up with a selkie in order to recover her family heirlooms and find a way back home.

In Hunt on Dark Waters, readers met Evelyn, a witch who stole from her vampire ex, Lizzie, and tumbled through a magical portal into the purgatorial Threshold, a watery world between realms full of enormous monsters. In Blood on the Tide, Lizzie is hot on Evelyn’s tail, but unsure of how she’ll get back to her own world and in desperate need of a guide through the Threshold. After Lizzie rescues a selkie named Maeve, the two women form a shaky partnership. Maeve will guide Lizzie through the horrors of the Threshold in search of Evelyn and the Crimson Hag, the infamous ship that picked her up. In return, Lizzie will help Maeve recover her stolen seal skin, which allows her to shift forms.

Calling all lovers of villains and morally gray characters—this one’s for you! As you might expect, Lizzie has real bite, and she truly lets nothing stand in the way of finding Evelyn. Maeve is a match for Lizzie thanks to her own supernatural strength, and watching the women battle against their environment and the cunning of the Crimson Hag crew is nothing short of thrilling. Action drives the plot, with sexual tension and lustful stares placed amid high-octane adventure.

Robert uses the murky morality of her heroines to up the stakes of their relationship. Both Lizzie and Maeve have not only been betrayed and have had precious things taken from them, but also known and dispensed cruelty. Trusting each other doesn’t come easily, but they’re faced with few other options. Blood on the Tide emphasizes the danger that comes with trust and the vulnerability it requires, which creates potential for both betrayal and rewards.

Robert deepens the world building of her series, exploring the Threshold through the eyes of both an inhabitant and an outsider just as she did in Hunt on Dark Waters. There’s a heady mix of genres here, from fantasy adventure, to sizzling romance and a dash of horror, as Lizzie and Maeve face downright frightening baddies. It’s over all too soon, thanks to Robert’s compulsively page-turning storytelling, and readers will be left eagerly wondering where the Crimson Sails series will take us next.

Read our review of the first Crimson Sails novel, ‘Hunt on Dark Waters.’

Calling all lovers of villains and morally gray characters—Katee Robert’s latest fantasy romance is for you.
FictionLiterary FictionComing of Age

Bad Habit

Review by Laura Sackton

In her first work to be translated into English, Spanish poet, playwright and author Alana S. Portero captures the complexities of trans girlhood and adolescence. Set in the working-class San Blas neighborhood of Madrid in the 1980s and 1990s, Bad Habit, is full of chaotic, messy, vibrant life. The unnamed protagonist, a trans girl who possesses an unshakable knowledge of herself but lacks a way to express it safely, has a singular first-person narrative voice. Her campy humor, biting observations and poetic musings will leave a lasting impression on readers.

Portero balances long, meaty passages of self-reflection with vivid scenes grounded in sensory detail. The resulting mix reads like a fictional memoir, a woman baring her soul with a wink. It even follows the expected beats of a coming-of-age memoir: the protagonist’s childhood and early realization that her gender is at odds with how the world sees her; her first bittersweet experience of love; her teenage exploits in Madrid’s downtown party scene; her painful attempts to blockade herself in the closet; her tentative forays into trans life.

Portero writes about the intersections of gender, sex, desire and longing—intersections that collide in the body—with incredible thoughtfulness and nuance. She also beautifully portrays trans sisterhood and found family. Many trans women play important roles in the protagonist’s life, often in surprising and unpredictable ways. These women are lonely, crass, loving, tough and each distinct. The care they give one another radiates off the page, even, and especially, when the narrative gets grim.

Sometimes Mara Faye Lethem’s translation feels a bit clunky; occasional oddly constructed sentences may take a moment to untangle. But this hardly matters, because the prose overall is so fresh. The protagonist’s ability to see herself and the people in her life both up close and from a distance is irresistible. Bad Habit is queer fiction at its painful, honest, celebratory best, rejoicing in the beauty of trans lives while simultaneously acknowledging the violence that the world too often thrusts upon them.

The campy humor, biting observations and poetic musings of Bad Habit’s heroine will leave a lasting impression on readers. This is queer fiction at its painful, honest, celebratory best.
Nonfiction

Ascent to Power

Review by Roger Bishop

Harry S. Truman had served only 42 days as vice president when Franklin D. Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945. Truman had been a respected senator, best known for creating a commission that tracked government spending and saved the country millions during World War II, but despite FDR’s ailing health, the president had done nothing to prepare his successor to assume the highest office in the country. In a pointed diary note from May 6, 1948, Truman wrote, “I was handicapped by lack of knowledge of both foreign and domestic affairs—due principally to Mr. Roosevelt’s inability to pass on responsibility. He was always careful to see that no credit went to anyone else for accomplishment.”

How Truman moved to end the war and met many other challenges with long-range implications in both international affairs and domestic policy is the subject of David L. Roll’s sprawling, insightful, well-researched and engagingly written Ascent to Power: How Truman Emerged From Roosevelt’s Shadow and Remade the World. This period, Roll writes, “spawned the most consequential and productive events since the Civil War,” and the U.S. “emerged from the Second World War as the most powerful nation in the world.” Skillfully presenting often conflicting accounts of events as perceived by key figures, Roll shows that despite numerous missteps, controversies and public criticism, the Truman administration’s record of achievement is ultimately impressive.

As the Cold War developed, Truman broke from FDR’s friendly approach to the Soviet Union, blaming the nation for “destroy[ing] the independence and democratic character” of Europe. Truman boosted U.S. military strength “as a means of preventing war.” Although he faced strong opposition from Congress, Truman continued to pursue New Deal policies and introduced a courageous civil rights agenda far beyond anything ever proposed by a previous president. His international affairs initiatives, which became known as the Truman Doctrine, helped revive the economies of Western Europe and Japan, and “made bold and risky decisions that led to the liberation of millions of human beings” abroad—though Roll also admits that Truman’s support of Zionism came “at great cost to the lives of Palestinian Arabs,” who were driven from their homes and businesses to become “starving and dispossessed.” 

In 1952, Winston Churchill told Truman, “You more than any other man saved Western civilization.” Ascent to Power’s carefully crafted narrative superbly shows how he did it.

Ascent to Power is a carefully crafted biography that superbly captures the presidency of Harry S. Truman.
Children's & YAMiddle GradeChildren's

Anzu and the Realm of Darkness

Review by Nicole Brinkley

Anzu is used to classmates making fun of her name, food and culture. In a new town, she’s prepared for the teasing to continue. When she asks for spirits to help her disappear during the Obon festival, Anzu doesn’t expect the spirit guardian of Yomi, the Shinto underworld, to steal a necklace gifted to Anzu by her grandmother. When the canine guardian disappears back to Yomi, Anzu chases after him and accidentally falls into the spirit realm.

Most of the souls in Yomi mean Anzu no harm, but Queen Izanami wants to add Anzu to her collection of spectral children. For Anzu to return home, she must escape Izanami’s magic and flee through the damaged Marsh Gate back to her own world. But Anzu realizes it isn’t enough to save herself. If she’s careful and brave, Anzu can save every child Izanami has stolen and help repair the gate before Obon is over and she is lost forever.

Pilu of the Woods author Mai K. Nguyen explores the strength that culture and ancestry provide in Anzu and the Realm of Darkness. Muted purples and blacks with occasional pops of brighter pigments from colorist Diana Tsai Santos help set the mood of the whimsical yet spooky spirit realm.

There are many characters to love, from the too-cute Nurikabe spirit that helps Anzu escape, to Anzu’s magically gifted grandmother, but Anzu still shines brightest. Despite her best attempts to hide herself—introducing herself as “Anne,” a nickname given by cruel classmates who thought her given name too strange—Anzu’s strength comes from embracing who she is. Anzu and the Realm of Darkness reminds readers that girls like Anzu need not shrink themselves: They deserve to use their voice, love what they love, and take up space.

Nguyen blends Japanese folklore with Shinto and Buddhist stories to create the spirits Anzu meets in her interdimensional adventure. For children who want to learn more, a mythological guide to the kami and yokai that make appearances in the story can be found in the backmatter. 

Fans of Hayao Miyakazi’s beloved film Spirited Away or supernatural graphic novels like Remy Lai’s Ghost Book will find Anzu and the Realm of Darkness a worthy addition to their shelves.

Anzu and the Realm of Darkness reminds readers that girls like Anzu need not shrink themselves: They deserve to use their voice, love what they love, and take up space.
NonfictionMemoir

Another Word for Love

Review by Natalia Berry

“They say love is patient and kind, but they never say what else is true: that love is also anxious and fearful, desperate and forever on unsure footing,” award-winning journalist Carvell Wallace writes in his debut memoir, Another Word for Love. Known best for his intimate celebrity profiles, Wallace now turns his pen to exploring his own childhood as the son of a single mother. With honesty and candor, Wallace reveals how the poverty and abuse of his youth impacted his views on masculinity, desire, sex and love. Another Word for Love is an excavation of his personal history that asks and answers questions about living and loving as a queer, Black man.

Wallace is a brilliant storyteller and masterful student in the language of love. But what about the things that get in the way of loving and being loved? Wallace has a lot to say here, too. For many Black Americans, like Wallace’s complicated mother, the act of loving is often superseded by the pursuit of survival. As Wallace becomes a parent himself, his essays chronicle the history of police brutality and racial violence in America, frequently asking, How can we teach our children to love in the face of fear and death? It’s here, in Wallace’s frank examinations of family and community building, that his writing truly dazzles.

Wallace’s tumultuous childhood meant he was always on the move, setting down in cities across the country without planting roots. Throughout his travels, he traversed different parts of his identity and uncovered messy, tender truths about himself and other men. From discussing the importance of Solange’s When I Get Home to unpacking letters between Pat Parker and Audre Lorde, navigating a kink space and sharing harrowing stories about the harm he’s caused others, Wallace’s prose is always sharp, witty and honest. Ultimately, though, Another Word for Love offers this radical declaration: Pursuing love is an act of defiance. No matter what trauma or complexities fill your story, love is all of our birthrights.

In Another Word for Love, Carvell Wallace’s dazzling debut memoir, love is an act of defiance.
Science Fiction & FantasyFantasy

A Letter to the Luminous Deep

Review by Stephanie Cohen-Perez

Sylvie Cathrall’s A Letter to the Luminous Deep is a poignant epistolary adventure set in an underwater landscape filled with academics, explorers and artists. Through letters, log entries and other documents, various narrators describe their society, their passions, their families and, most importantly, the mysterious disappearances of eloquent recluse E. Cidnosin and the socially anxious yet brilliant scholar Henerey Clel. The primary correspondence takes place between Sophy, E.’s sister, and Vyerin, Henerey’s brother, who have bonded through their shared grief and wish to learn more about what actually transpired between their siblings. 

Cathrall’s whimsical water world is filled with remarkable settings like the Cidnosins’ Deep House, a home well below the ocean’s surface that is as mysterious as it is beautiful, and academic institutions such as the Boundless Campus. Each character’s voice is distinct, and readers will blush and giggle along with Sophy and Vy as they track E. and Henerey’s relationship as it evolves from friendship into passionate love. One of the most memorable aspects of the book is watching Sophy and Vy’s own relationship grow. While Sophy is insatiably curious about E.’s past, Vy is a bit more cautious when it comes to learning more about his brother. As Sophy and Vy realize how important this shared cause is to them, readers get to see them develop their own wonderful friendship. 

While the plot largely focuses on love both romantic and familial, the elegant letters hold sinister memories as well, clues leading up to the seaquake that shattered Deep House, after which E. and Henerey disappeared. There are many secrets to uncover, from a mysterious object found just outside Deep House, to E. and Sophy’s strained relationship with their brother, Arvist, to Sophy and her wife’s discoveries in the Ridge, home to deep-sea monsters. It’s up to Sophy and Vy to put the pieces together to heal the hearts and souls of their families and themselves.

A whimsical yet emotional fantasy, Sylvie Cathrall’s A Letter to the Luminous Deep is a delightful, oceanic twist on epistolary romances and dark academia.
FictionLiterary Fiction

All Fours

Review by Cat Acree

Menopause is profoundly misunderstood and misrepresented, in part because the generations who’ve been through it aren’t, generally speaking, inclined to talk publicly about it. Only in the last decade or two have people so openly discussed infertility and miscarriages. Perhaps we can hope that once this younger generation enters perimenopause, it will no longer feel like such a mystifying hormonal event horizon. But so far, there have been few works of contemporary fiction about menopause, and even fewer that are as erotic and funny as All Fours, the first novel from artist, filmmaker and author Miranda July in nearly a decade.

July’s protagonist is an unnamed artist with intentionally clear ties to July’s own identity, and the plot is described simply enough: The artist plans to drive across the country from Los Angeles to New York City, leaving her husband and child for several weeks. Instead, she stops at a motel a mere 30 minutes from her home. Beginning with an expensive and exquisite redesign of her motel room, followed by a charged relationship with a guy who works at Hertz, she sets out on a no-holds-barred pursuit of desire, selfhood, sex and liberation.

A character arc is typically shaped by an incendiary realization, but July’s artist experiences such revelations on a weekly, if not daily, basis. She holds a misconception, she unlearns it, she reframes and continues on. This process—truly, the cyclical experience of having a curious brain—allows the artist’s mind to feel like your own. It also structures All Fours like a classic quest narrative, as new emotional and sexual adventures open up after each sequence of self-discovery.

The cover of All Fours is an image of a cliff by Albert Bierstadt, a 19th-century German American painter who’s known for his lush Western landscapes. Bierstadt’s cliff is shadowed and steep, and from the valley below bursts a golden light so intense that it washes out the trees, the clouds and anything that might be in the distance. For many women, menopause is that cliff: dangerous, distant and a bit unreal. July’s protagonist hurtles toward that cliff inelegantly and imperfectly but, as much as she possibly can, honestly—and that commitment to honesty at the expense of normalcy is what makes this book queer. The cost of the “unconventional” life she seeks is significant; look at the conversations that must be had, the choices that must be made to disrupt the status quo in favor of living truthfully. Her unmasking and remaking are incendiary, but also, look how hard she holds on to what she loves most: her family, her connections, her spark.

Because there is no end to her quest (that’d be death, the real cliff), there can be no victory, but All Fours is undeniably victorious.

There have been few works of contemporary fiction about menopause, and even fewer that are as erotic and funny as All Fours, the first novel from artist, filmmaker and author Miranda July in nearly a decade.
NonfictionMedicine

A Fatal Inheritance

Review by Deborah Mason

There are families whose histories are riddled with cancer: little boys and their young fathers dying from brain cancer, toddlers succumbing to eye cancer while their young mothers are diagnosed with breast cancer. Lawrence Ingrassia, an award-winning business journalist, comes from one of those families; he lost his mother, three siblings and a nephew to cancer. His family had no idea why they were dealt such a horrific hand. Environmental factors? A virus? The rotten luck of the draw? It never occurred to them to blame their genes. Until recently, most experts believed that genetics played no role in cancer. In A Fatal Inheritance: How a Family Misfortune Revealed a Deadly Medical Mystery, Ingrassia tells the story of how wrong these experts were.

While many researchers have investigated possible genetic links to cancer, Ingrassia focuses on the work of doctors Frederick Pei Li and Joseph Fraumeni Jr. Their research eventually led to the discovery of what is now known as Li-Fraumeni Syndrome, a rare inheritable genetic mutation that increases the risk of many forms of cancer. People with LFS are likely to have cancer at a young age, even in infancy, and frequently can develop more than one type. Ingrassia’s family carries the mutation, although he didn’t inherit it.

Ingrassia weaves in the stories of his and other Li-Fraumeni families, never allowing the reader to forget the human suffering that spurred the research. His sister Gina’s story is particularly devastating. Months after Angela, the youngest Ingrassia sibling, died from abdominal cancer at 24, Gina developed a nagging cough. She was young, a long-distance runner and a nonsmoker. Her doctor thought she might have an infection. Instead, newly married and still grieving the death of her baby sister, Gina was diagnosed with a large cell lung carcinoma usually seen in smokers in their 60s. She was only 32 when she died.

Ingrassia is a brave and honest writer. He details the suffering endured by the dying and their families and acknowledges their fear, anger and confusion, as well as the many unanswerable questions around this genetic disorder. In this compassionate book, Ingrassia grants his subjects the dignity of being remembered not only for their deaths, but for their all-too-short lives.

A Fatal Inheritance recounts the discovery of how cancer can be passed down through genes, providing a compassionate look at families forever changed.
FictionAudioPoetry

Root Fractures

Review by Norah Piehl

Award-winning poet Diana Khoi Nguyen traverses deeply personal emotional landscapes in her second collection, Root Fractures. Nguyen’s poems, as the title suggests, trace her family’s fractures, from their origins in Vietnam, to her father’s attempts to resettle and assimilate in California, to her brother’s self-erasure from the family. Movingly read by Nguyen herself, the audiobook offers a close approximation of attending a poetry reading. Perhaps the most challenging aspect of producing this audio version was that Nguyen, who’s also a multimedia artist, often incorporates photographs and unique text treatments in her written work. The audiobook of Root Fractures comes with a PDF of these poems, whose visual forms are also described on the recording. Clever techniques, such as muted sound to approximate grayed-out text or multiple tracks to replicate overlapping text, make the auditory experience a beautiful complement to the visual one.

Read our starred review of the print edition of Root Fractures.

Movingly read by author Diana Khoi Nguyen herself, the audiobook of Root Fractures offers a close approximation of attending a poetry reading.

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