Books of the Month: February 2024

February 2024 Book recommendations

We’re not going to lie: we’re pretty excited for what February has in store for us, books-wise. (We’d even think this if one of our editors didn’t have a novel due out in the second month of 2024.) This month has it all: new books by longtime favorites, a terrific example of punk lit, and a thoughtful work on the state of labor to cap it all off. Here’s a glimpse of what we’re excited about circa now.

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On Ghosts and Absence: A Review of Terese Svoboda’s “Dog on Fire”

"Dog on Fire" cover

“My brother was dead was what I remembered then,” reflects our unnamed narrator, “and I cried a little the way a car does when the ignition’s gone, a click and a grind, something that needs something, that could be stopped only by stopping.” That balky engine seems a defining image for Terese Svoboda’s new novel. Dog on Fire isn’t itself aflame, but rather smoldering: something that needs something. That’s not a criticism the text delivers an arresting portrait of both melancholy and a way out but rather a description of what’s lacking for the principal players. Both the grieving sister and her fellow-narrator Aphra, the brother’s lover and one of the only characters with a name, fumble after what psychologists call “closure.” 

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