L.S. Popovich's Blog, page 12

Review of Roxana by Daniel Defoe

Not very impressive in every way. Roxana seems at times like a rewrite of Moll Flanders. The similarities are obvious. But the main issue is Defoe’s verbosity. It wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the repetition. He often tells the reader things they should already know. Assumes the reader needs filling in on […]

Review of The Girl with the Barbed Wire Hair by Carlton Mellick III

Some CM3 books are not really bizarro.  This falls into that category. There is the usual horror, gore, sex and supernatural stuff, but none of it is particularly avant-guarde punk. The barbed wire hair visuals are slightly bizarro, but not really. Aside from faltering when it comes to conjuring a creepy atmosphere, this is more […]

Review of The Knickknack Case: A Tony Flaner Mystery by Johnny Worthen

My first foray into the Tony Flaner mystery series. This is a good place to start with the work of Johnny Worthen. I will be reading the other mysteries in this series. I find the voice and the sarcastic narrator irresistible. The mystery itself is nothing to write home about. Essentially wild goose chase. But […]

Review of 8-Bit Apocalypse by Amanda Billings

I purchased this novel to feed two addictions I have willfully acquired: reading about video games and bizarro fiction. Though this was published alongside other more grotesque works by a primarily bizarro publisher, this was more an ode to video game history in fictional form than a bizarro novel in my opinion. Sure, it features […]

Review of Mneme’s Stoned by Luke Delin

After reading Orbo and the Godhead, I was overwhelmed by the fantastic fusion of ideas and subdued force of that novel.  Where that novel was ecstatic and full-throttle, this novel was a quieter whirlwind. Mneme’s Stoned possesses many qualities of the previous work: absurdism, magical realism, drug use, mental illness, and wacky, unexplainable phenomena. The […]

Review of Eyes: Novellas and Stories by William H. Gass

Gass makes impressive use of language to describe the thoughts and feelings of inanimate objects.  By exploring perspectives in this way, he is able to layer on a bunch of observations.It would appear that he holds plot and character development in contempt. Instead, he maneuvers the reader through a skewed world fraught with satire and […]

Review of A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck

Admittedly, I have asked ChatGPT to write plenty of sequels to “The Library of Babel.”  I have thought about the story ceaselessly. I have written my own fan fictions here and there. Borges was quoted as saying “I imagine Heaven as a kind of library.” The author of this book turns a library into Hell. […]

Review of The Al-Alam Revolution by J.S. Xander

Review of solenoid by Mircea Cartarescu

A depiction of the remarkable wealth of one man’s inner life amid the bodily poverty and blindingly dull inheritance of the paltry years allotted to him on a damaged and ravaged earth in a squalid and unforgiving metropolis. Drenched in cosmic surrealism and accoutered with interlocking symbols. The author pursues central questions and then intersperses scenes […]

Review of Diary of a Void by Emi Yagi

Japanese Slice of Life Versus American Literary Fiction. Slice of Life: mundane day to day events occur regularly. Characters go to work, commute, go shopping, etc. They interact with others in quirky and amusing ways. Characters make decisions, but the consequences are not usually earth-shattering. Readers have the chance to live a life vicariously through […]