Transparency - Isak

Transparency

In the spirit of transparency, and under the requirements from the Federal Trade Commission, know that Isak has received one or more complimentary books from the following publishers and their imprints:

Aflame Books
AK Press
Bull City Press
Coffee House Press
Dalkey Archive Press
Dzanc Books
Europa Editions
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
Graywolf Press
Haus Publishing
History Press
House of Anansi
Little, Brown and Company
Kwani Trust
Miami University Press
Milkweed Editions
MTV Books
Open Letter
Other Press
PM Press
Press 53
Random House (and associated imprints)
Russian Life
Seal Press
Seven Stories
Short Flight / Long Drive Books
St. Martin's Press
Syracuse University Press
University of Georgia Press
Wayne State University Press

Isak has also received complimentary or discount subscriptions, or review copies, to the following magazines:

Granta
Poets & Writers
The Boston Review

Isak has never promised positive reviews, or even guaranteed coverage, in exchange for any product or service.

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Isak

Isak is a space to celebrate tales and truth in the curious, joyful way embodied by the writer for which it is named. The name "Isak," after all, means "laughter," as she was fond of pointing out.

By tales, I mean fiction (especially short fiction), as well as other literary and artistic narratives. By truth, I mean the world in which we live. I especially have my eye on creative social justice.

Isak: The Extended Version

Support Isak

For more than seven years, I've edited Isak, supporting it with my time and treasure. This site has always been ad-free. I do this because I believe in this as a project and because it is a joy. If you find this website valuable, and are moved to contribute a donation, I will be deeply grateful.

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Transparency

In the spirit of transparency, know that Isak has received one or more complimentary books from the publishers listed here.

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Featured Book Reviews

Rebecca Solnit: Motion Studies: Time, Space and Eadweard Muybridge
I would be interested in this book if it focused solely on the “annihilation of time and space” that hooked public and professional attention in the late-nineteenth century, but certainly Muybridge’s life and work is a compelling way to focus this story. And Solnit seems primed as the perfect guide. But a wealth of intriguing material is, unfortunately, diluted into a pile of anecdotes linked more by association than anything more meaningful. Read the review here.
Francine Prose: Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife
I felt relieved by Prose's stance that takes the diary seriously as a work of art. Her case for Frank as both an ambitious and talented writer, rather than an incidental one, is convincing. She also pays particular attention to how the Frank line about "people being really good at heart" has been mutated and decontextualized beyond belief. But. Something is missing. Read the review here.
William Styron: Lie Down in Darkness
What a dark and strange novel this is. I came away impressed with Styron's guts, both as a technician and an imagination. Indeed I was surprised by how far Styron was willing to go with the macabre; the overtures of incest complicated the rendering of love that threads through the novel. At times, though, I itched at the book's pretension. Read my review here.
Amelie Nothomb: Hygiene and Assassin
An unlikeable, combative Nobel laureate finds out that he will die soon from a rare form of cancer, and he grants five journalists very rare interviews. See my video book review here
Rob Vollmar: Bluesman Complete
There's a lot going for Bluesman, including woodcut-style art that often bends out of the box. The thick, exaggerated lines and heavy shadows hit just the right note for a story about roots musicians. And there's a fearlessness in how the book faces the Gothic mythos and religiosity that informs so much of the blues. Ultimately, though, it felt thin. What was probably intended as archetypes felt like caricature.
Read my review here.
Melissa V. Harris-Perry: Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America
Harris-Perry's unconventional book wobbles as it straddles academic rigor and mainstream accessibility, intimacy and analysis, but its ideas have worth, interest, and urgency. Read the review here.
Toni Morrison: Sula
Sinking into Toni Morrison's fiction is like sinking into loamy earth. She writes novels that are ground heels-down into a planet of soil and water and stone. Read my review here.
Carla Speed McNeil: Finder Library Volume 1
The first thing to know about Finder is that it is really weird. This a book full of beginnings, a provocative pile-up of crushing characters. Read my review here.
Vladimir Nabokov: Pale Fire
Nobody does a madman like Vladimir Nabokov. He revels in the voices of those who inhabit a space where reality blurs: voices that are by turns disconcerting, obnoxious, hilarious, provocative, and altogether intoxicating. Read my review here.
Best European Fiction 2012
The hybridic nature of this anthology gives it a rare dynamism. But the fiction feels more mixed than in previous editions, with more middling stories and few that I was head over heels for. More.