Reviews – Patrick Lohier

OUT WEST is Out Now! | April 1, 2024

I was honoured and humbled when my friend Michael O’Leary asked me if I would write a blurb for his newest book of poems, OUT WEST. Michael had shared drafts as he wrote and revised the poems, and I knew that they were shaping up to be unique and mesmerizing.

The book is out. I’m excited to share that he has created a mind-altering work of intellect, passion and rare vision. Words that come to mind include adventure, intense, physics, surreal, longing, probing, masterful, unusual, rare. These poems are strange and gorgeous.

OUT WEST is a reflection of the brilliant polymath I know Michael to be – poet, engineer, professional quant, husband, father, a man with as earnest and restless a mind and soul as you’ll ever encounter, steeped in numbers, lit, music, nature and curiosity.

Over years, I’ve swum in many rivers and lakes with Michael, trekked dense forests, explored ink-black caverns, risked death by heat, cold and gravity. I vouch for him. He’s the real deal, an adventurer of the world we see as well as the many possible worlds of the imagination.

Cribbing from Rilke, I encourage you to buy OUT WEST and change your life. You can order it from The Cultural Society today: bit.ly/3VGJBUS

A book on a table. Michael O'Leary. Out West. The Cultural Society

Review of Colson Whitehead’s novel ‘Harlem Shuffle’ for Harvard Review | December 7, 2021

Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle is a bravura performance, an immersive, laugh-out-loud, riveting adventure whose narrative energy is boosted by its memorable hero and a highly relevant backdrop of social injustice. Set from 1959 to 1964, the novel comprises three episodes charting the precarious rise of Ray Carney, a self-made man who habitually dips and sometimes dives into New York’s criminal underworld. Read my review here.

Review of Laila Lalami’s book ‘Conditional Citizens’ for Harvard Review | November 8, 2020

In her new book Conditional Citizens, Laila Lalami argues that America’s vaunted diversity and pluralism are undermined by actions designed to differentiate systematically between an “us” group and an “other” group. Lalami pairs her compelling personal narrative with perceptive and wide-ranging insights to reveal the cultural, social, and historical forces that create our modern American caste system. Read my review here.

Review of Ted Chiang’s short story collection ‘Exhalation’ for Harvard Review | October 4, 2019

Ted Chiang has built a cult following based on a few dozen exquisitely crafted, intellectually provocative, and poignant science-fiction short stories and novellas. His new short-story collection Exhalation presents Chiang’s unique talent in abundance. Read my review here.

Review of Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s novel ‘Friday Black’ for Harvard Review | May 14, 2019

The Kendrick Lamar quote that serves as the epigraph of Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s debut short story collection, Friday Black, evokes the spirit of a promising debut album release. That mood suits this collection, which puts the author’s engaging talent and impressive creative range on full display. Read my review here.

Review of Esi Edugyan’s novel ‘Washington Black’ for Literary Review of Canada | October 6, 2018

Esi Edugyan brings extraordinary talent and ingenuity to the subject of slavery in her epic novel, Washington Black, a sprawling tale of adventure centred on a young boy who escapes from slavery on a Barbadian plantation in the early 1830s. Read my review here.

(Note: Subscribe to the Literary Review of Canada to access, or look for the October print edition at your local bookstore.)

Review of ‘Heads of the Colored People’ for Harvard Review | July 2, 2018

Nafissa Thompson-Spires’s debut short-story collection, Heads of the Colored People, captures black lives in this current, divided, Facebook-Live-Black-Lives-Matter-#MeToo moment, and catalogues trauma’s impacts on black bodies, minds and souls. Read my review here.

Review of the graphic novel ‘Here’ and interview with Richard McGuire for Boing Boing | Dec 11, 2014

The experience of reading Richard McGuire’s Here bends the mind. My initial reaction was tentative, even puzzled. But I soon found myself immersed and often moved. Here has the surprising depth of a magician’s top hat. The combination of the surreal and the nostalgic are mesmerizing. The book is an ingenious epic of time and space, and I think readers everywhere, and of many ages, will find it delightful. Read my review of Here and my interview with McGuire, well . . . here.

Review of Rivka Galchen’s story collection ‘American Innovations’ | Oct 28, 2014

The title of Rivka Galchen’s short story collection American Innovations is significant. Most, if not all, of the ten stories are takes on classics: James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”, Borges’ “The Aleph”, Gogol’s “The Nose”, etc. Ergo innovations. These are updates, American-set riffs and reboots of canonical stories.

All of the stories are idiosyncratic and convey distinctly feminine perspectives (all of the protagonists in the collection are women or girls). The narrative voice is consistently eccentric, even loopy. Each protagonist seems inescapably entangled within her own off-kilter perspective. Each is an oddball. A few of the stories are brilliant and memorable. Continue reading “Review of Rivka Galchen’s story collection ‘American Innovations’ | Oct 28, 2014”

Review of the graphic novel ‘Sugar Skull’ and interview with Charles Burns for Boing Boing | Aug 22, 2014

For over 30 years, Charles Burns has quietly carved out a reputation as one of the most talented and compelling cartoonists of his generation. In 2010, X’ed Out appeared, billed as the first installment of a trilogy. The second installment, The Hive, appeared in 2012. The last installment of the trilogy, Sugar Skull, is due out this September from Pantheon. Read my review of Sugar Skull here.