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My review of The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock is live at The Nervous Breakdown

The first time I met Donald Ray Pollock was at a reading he did opening up for Chuck Palahniuk in St. Louis. It was a wild night, and I dragged my younger brother Bill out with me—he’d never seen Palahniuk read before. The event was packed, and the audience couldn’t have been more hip, more […]

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Review of Volt by Alan Heathcock is now live at The Nervous Breakdown

Volt (Graywolf Press) by Alan Heathcock is a linked collection of short stories. It reminded me of Knockemstiff for sure, for its rural setting, and also Sarah Court for its families overlapping, fighting and loving. The testimonial of Benjamin Percy got my attention, but the emotional truths, the revelations and understandings, the prose and the […]

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