Full Stop

This essay was first published last month in our subscriber-only newsletter. To receive the monthly newsletter and to support Full Stop’s original literary criticism, please consider joining us on Patreon. Young Girl on a Red Carpet, Felice Casoraticirca (1912) At first glance, the books around which this essay is framed make an odd quartet: In the first, a single mother tries to immerse herself in an eighteenth-century novel over the course of a single day spent tending to her newborn.

[Metonymy Press; 2023] Tr. from the French by Kama La Mackerel This review was originally published in the Full Stop Quarterly “Tender Tongues,” edited by Natália Affonso. Subscribe at our Patreon page to get access to this and future issues, also available for purchase here. “Invisible ink is what lies under, between, outside the lines, hidden until the right reader discovers it . . .

[Graywolf Press; 2024] She is the type of figure who lends herself to mythmaking, both through her own self-mythologizing and the actual facts of her existence. An entertainer, dancer, and artist, Marta Becket and her husband were driving through Death Valley, California, in 1967 when they stopped to fix a flat tire across from an abandoned hotel. She found a doorway, peered through its holes, and saw an empty theater. This would become her theater.

[Open Letter Books; 2026] Tr. from the Spanish by Alice Banks and Katie Whittemore The eponymous term “the city” means little without proper context—and on first glance, means even less when used as a book title. Yet in this case, readers soon find, with the author’s guidance, that the versatility of the phrase is exactly what makes it perfect for this novel.

[Open Letter Books; 2026] Tr. from the Polish by Mark Ordon The utopia is defined as an idealized, perfect world; and even at the roots, it proclaims impossibility. The word straddles the Greek eu-topos meaning “good place” and, in the same breath, ou-topos or “nowhere.” Coined in Thomas More’s 1516 titular novel, a utopia is primarily characterized by harmonious communal living.

This review was originally published in the Full Stop Quarterly “Tender Tongues,” edited by Natália Affonso. Subscribe at our Patreon page to get access to this and future issues, also available for purchase here. Noeme Grace C. Tabor-Farjani, whom I fondly call Miss P, began her writing journey in writing courses and workshops put together by a local coterie I had spearheaded almost a decade ago.

[SJP Lit; 2026] Tr. from the Japanese by Polly Barton; Charlotte Goff There was no guidance around which freshly translated novel by Japanese writer Nao-Cola Yamazaki (they/them) to read first. I was told that these books could be read as a unit, a pair, or separate, one indifferent towards the other. I don’t read book jackets or summaries before starting a novel.

[The Song Cave; 2026] Chimes: A Monologue opens with the silence of the pandemic-emptied city (“there is for the first time quiet, finally quiet on my block”).

The Joyful Song of the Partridge – Paulina Chiziane [Archipelago Books; 2024] Tr. from the Portuguese by David Brookshaw This review was originally published in the Full Stop Quarterly “Tender Tongues,” edited by Natália Affonso. Subscribe at our Patreon page to get access to this and future issues, also available for purchase here.

[University of North Carolina Press; 2026] In a semiquincentennial year fated to incite fresh contests over American corporate identity, the two most consequential political movements before the Fourth of July have focused more on foreign-born migrants than citizens.