fiction and creative non-fiction from Brennan Quenneville
Marcus Sedgwick's Midwinterblood is one of those books that defies review because if you discuss any element of its plot, you start chipping away at the mystery and suspense that make it such a gripping read. Here's the most I'm comfortable relating: For its first few pages, Midwinterblood seems like it might be a romance [...]
[This post contains spoilers for Ender's Game.] Technically, the climax of Ender's Game takes place when Ender uses the Little Doctor on the bugger home world, destroying it and, in the process, ending the Third Invasion. The story's stakes are highest here---worn past the limits of his endurance, Ender makes a final push of what [...]
Ernest Hemingway's most famous book is his simplest and he uses that simplicity to tell a very specific narrative with broad metaphorical applicability. In the micro, The Old Man and the Sea tells the story of Santiago, the titular old man, who spends days at sea catching a giant marlin. In the macro, it's a [...]
Reading Un-Su Kim's The Plotters, I really thought there'd be more assassinations. The book, which was originally released in 2010 and eventually translated into English in 2019, tracks the adventures of Reseng, a contract killer. Abandoned by his parents and raised by an assassin, Reseng falls into a life of murder and though he commits [...]
His reputation preceded him. I had heard David Foster Wallace's name long before I read any of his work---I started with Consider the Lobster, for those who are curious---and I knew that Infinite Jest was worshipped by a sizable cadre of devotees well before I had internalized the image of a scruffy, long-haired, bandana-wearing genius. [...]
Meaghan O'Connell's slim memoir, And Now We Have Everything: On Motherhood Before I Was Ready should probably be required reading for every millennial considering having children and for most who already do. O'Connell's unpretentious prose demystifies and de-romanticizes the pop culture vision of pregnancy: This is not a book about feeling glowing and radiant or [...]
One of my favorite places on earth is completely and utterly ordinary and that's okay. Powell's City of Books, located in the heart of Portland, is subdivided into rooms identified by color. In the Blue Room you'll find literature and poetry. Philosophy and self-help are in the Purple Room. Each room, like a dog on [...]
I don't take the words of Ursula K. Le Guin lightly. So when a review of Nnedi Okorafor's Lagoon pushed me to learn more about the book, I soon found myself reading the Le Guin quote that sits atop Joey Hi-Fi's magnificent cover art. "There's more imagination in a page of Nnedi Okorafor's work," says [...]
I've never met Susanna Clarke, the reclusive British author best known for her massive and wonderful 2004 historical fantasy novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and so she can't knowingly have written her most recent novel, Piranesi, just for me. But it sure feels like she did. Piranesi is an epistolary novel told through the [...]
We're five months into a global pandemic and the world is (still) on fire. If you listen closely, above the raucous tumult of daily news briefings and abrasively selfish protestors, you can hear the soft whine of every single person on earth collectively screaming through clenched teeth. We all need a break. We all need [...]
Songs & Stories 