Short stories! Available now!
The Common is a beautiful print and online journal from Amherst, Mass. Their superslick website featured a great review of Madeline ffitch’s short story collection Valparaiso Round the Horn (March 2015). Its scope is deep and wide, exploring the Madeline’s prose style and how the stories work and what they mean, and it’s the sort of review that added to my own appreciation of the book. Jen Hinst-White concludes the review:
Whether your home base is rural, like ffitch’s, or you dwell in the city or in the suburbs, as I do, finding a potent book like this frees up the imagination—resets the moral compass—not through moralizing, but by jarring us. I read this book aloud, story by story, to my husband on our commute, and each time, it jolted me out of routine. It made me feel alive.
