Rick Moody

interviewed by Camille Renshaw

Originally published on July 1, 2001

Rick Moody was declared by The New Yorker to be one of the
most talented American writers under forty at the turn of the
[...]

Interview with Leah Stewart

interviewed by Camille Renshaw

Originally published on February 1, 2001

Camille Renshaw talks with novelist Leah Stewart about regionalism and research.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

reviewed by Camille Renshaw

Originally published on May 1, 1999

Dillard is teaching us to see. She wants us to be totally immersed in the present, because some day soon ‘we die and are put in the earth forever.

Charity

reviewed by Camille Renshaw

Originally published on October 1, 1998

Mark Richard populates his latest collection of short stories, Charity, with a desperate set of characters that includes hospitalized orphans, ex cons, mythological figures like Death, and a scorched forest fire fighter. These characters are stripped by adversity, their own stupidity, and addiction, and charity comes to them in strange forms: a nurse lets sick [...]

Suttree

reviewed by Camille Renshaw

Originally published on September 1, 1998

Although stylistically similar to Faulkner, Cormac McCarthy’s first novel, Suttree, brilliantly undermines the conventions of the Southern novel and the mythology of this tradition. Suttree is the story of an upper-middle class, college educated man who comes to Knoxville to live after being released from prison.
Cornelius (Buddy) Suttree is so displaced in his search [...]

Tumble Home

reviewed by Camille Renshaw

Originally published on September 1, 1998

Raymond Carver called her a precisionist. Others write that she is a minimalist and a miniaturist. As a student of her work I can only add illuminator and listener. Anything more would be too wordy a description for Amy Hempel.
If you’ve never read any Hempel before, prepare yourself for a different sort of story. [...]

The Passion

reviewed by Camille Renshaw

Originally published on August 1, 1998

Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion mixes the cosmic and the carnal into a Napoleonic era, surrealistic romance. The plot and subject matter are nothing new. Winterson’s ideas about language are.
The Passion creates, not so much a psychological identification with the main characters, Henri and Villanelle, as a loss of traditional bearings through Winterson’s juxtaposition of [...]

Purple America

reviewed by Camille Renshaw

Originally published on August 1, 1998

Rick Moody’s latest novel, Purple America, is the story of a stuttering son, Hex Raitliffe, who is home to care for his mother, a long sick invalid, after she is abandoned by his stepfather. Over the course of a single weekend Hex sees his good intentions, his love for his mother, inhibited by her desire [...]

The World Doesn’t End

reviewed by Camille Renshaw

Originally published on July 1, 1998

The 1990 Pulitzer Prize winner The World Doesn’t End is the only prose poetry collection to date to win that prestigious award. At the time the outcry and protests of prosaic poets and stuffy reviewers could be heard everywhere. The controversy itself was the only reason I ordered the book.
Simic, even though he is [...]

Edisto

reviewed by Camille Renshaw

Originally published on July 1, 1998

Voice is the key to Powell’s first novel, Edisto. “You say it ‘Simmons.’ I’m a rare one-m Simons,” says Powell’s 12-year-old narrator and child genius, Simons Manigault. Simons is a real kid, a young pillar of sanity in the midst adult absurdity, whose voice is filled with self-deprecation, irony, and precocious questioning.
Powell’s characters are [...]