Joyelle McSweeney

NewPages reviews Joyelle McSweeney’s Nylund, the Sarcographer

At NewPages, Cynthia Reeser reviews Joyelle McSweeney's *Nylund, the Sarcographer* (Tarpaulin Sky Press): "Joyelle McSweeney has not only created a unique concept – that of sarcography – she has illustrated it memorably with a masterful redefinition of what constitutes prose, and created a character who is the very embodiment of writing, reminding us of how flexible the narrative form can be."

At Harriet, Stephen Burt reviews Joyelle McSweeney's Nylund, the Sarcographer

At the Poetry Foundation's Harriet, Stephen Burt reviews Joyelle McSweeney's *Nylund, the Sarcographer* (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2007): "Flights of campy-cum-lyrical post-Ashberyan prose.... The Daisy parts are actually sexy, the murder-mystery parts and the furniture-store bits are genuinely funny, the language dissolves into stream-of-consanguinity post-surrealism and then resolves into a plot again.... It’s recommended"

Joyelle McSweeney interviewed at Prick of the Spindle

At Prick of the Spindle, Cynthia Reeser interviews Joyelle McSweeney (*Nylund, the Sarcographer*, Tarpaulin Sky Press): "Once you put the sarcography in motion as a matter of writing, then anything can happen, because the sentence can always open up trapdoors and catwalks via its clauses and phrases and puns and jokes and fantasies and so forth. In fact, the one rule I had when writing this was not to use good taste or understatement or comely resonance at all, but just to follow all my stray ideas, at the level of the sentence, to keep it opening, twinning, diverging, dividing. I used more conventional aspects of noir—a dead woman, a missing woman, a young hood, an (elderly) femme fatale—as sort of course correction as the book ran along."

Bookslut reviews Joyelle McSweeney’s Nylund, the Sarcographer

At Bookslut, Christopher Higgs reviews Joyelle McSweeney's *Nylund, the Sarcographer*: "Nylund, the Sarcographer is like interesting on steroids. Caution: if you are looking for a typical, straight forward, good old fashioned yarn, you’d do best to look elsewhere; but if you want to experience something fresh, daring, creepy, and significant, this is the one for you. It is the opposite of boring, an ominous conflagration devouring the bland terrain of conventional realism, the kind of work that tickles your inner ear, gives you the shivers, and tricks your left brain into thinking that your right brain has staged a coup d'état....Other than the incomparable Ben Marcus, I’m not sure anyone in contemporary letters can compete with the voracity of ingenuity, complexity, and beauty of McSweeney’s usage."

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