Scott Garson reviews Betty Superman on Big Other...

...and he says:

Though the shorts in the collection’s latter half are somewhat looser in their individual form, what Holland actually gives us contributes much to Betty Superman as a whole. Reading the collection, I found myself considering what some critics and scholars have dubbed the ”short-story cycle”: the book of linked stories, which is often seen in unfavorable comparison to the novel, as a sort of poor relation. Betty Superman is probably too short for readers to think to compare it to a novel. Such a comparison, though, might be interesting. Unlike many books of linked stories—which mimic, in their progression, the typical transformational arc of the novel—Betty Superman contains everything from the start. Between mother and daughter, there’s yearning, revulsion, intimacy, resentment, confession, secrecy, need. It’s all there, the whole rainbow, right from the first story. As we read on, different parts of it flicker.

Read the whole thing here. Thanks, Scott!

Things Roxane Gay has read recently...

...are listed here at HTML GIANT, and they include They Could No Longer Contain Themselves, of which she says:

I read an article in the most recent issue of The New Yorker about tiny houses, and the writer talks about the article’s main subject, this guy named Shafer who designs tiny houses and the writer says, “What makes Shafer’s houses different from others is the classical elements of form and proportion and the graceful compression of his design.” I kept thinking about that line as I thought about the stories in They Could No Longer Contain Themselves. They each contain the classical elements of good fiction and the compression in each story is also graceful like a tiny house that holds everything you need to feel at home.

Thanks, Roxane.

Mel Bosworth has written the first review of Betty Superman...

...by Tiff Holland, and it is excellent.

"Tiff Holland’s Betty Superman is about perseverance and loving the sometimes unlovable," he writes. "It’s about accepting what we have, what we’ve been given. It’s about the ability to know when the wisdom we’re receiving isn’t good, and having the heart and patience needed to carry us across that threshold of understanding."

Read the whole thing here.

Big-hearted and bullheaded...

...are two of the adjectives that Jay Robinson uses in his lovely review of They Could No Longer Contain Themselves in the Barn Owl Review.

He calls each of the five chapbooks "magnetizing" and says that each one is "unique in their wit, observation, and tact." You can read the whole review here. Thanks, Jay!