REVIEWS

PRINT AND ONLINE LITERARY REVIEWS FOR THE MUSICAL ILLUSIONIST

 

From Emerging Writers Network:

"...this has been my favorite book this year."

From Bookslut:

"...if the idea of jumping on a train and traveling through a museum in book form, catching glimpses of the fantastic as it passes by your window, strikes your fancy, then Rose’s debut collection might be the book you are searching for."

From DIAGRAM:

"Rose's own book repaginates the world, restores and recounts it in its glorious ambiguities and impossibilities, and is certainly capable of invoking wonder in whatever curious mind slips through the turnstile."

From The Providence Phoenix:

"Sometimes through engaging language, sometimes through intriguing ruminations, [Rose] gets us to suspend disbelief and transcend ourselves."

From The Brooklyn Rail:

"Rose vividly and ingeniously rewrites history, like a cartographer redrawing the lines of a city--and imbuing it with the force of his imagination."

From The Burger:

"...a wealth of imagination plus an encyclopedic knowledge of the world equals endlessly rewarding fictional play."

From The Village Voice:

"Rose displays... [an] uncanny predilection for masquerading whimsical invention as the most sober of facts."

From The Weekly Dig:

"Alex Rose has history by the strings. He is a great puppeteer and in his first work of fiction, The Musical Illusionist: And Other Tales, he displays his vast chest full of puppets to the world."

From Enfuse Magazine:

"Rose writes precise, linguistically rich sentences that seduce the reader with their exotic, uncommon vocabulary and images. His ideas, though complex and tortuously elaborated, nonetheless emerge clearly, leading to surprising revelations and possibilities..."

From The Feminist Review:

"...an absolutely enchanting work of literature."

From Library Journal:

"A potential cult classic, this utterly original work of fiction is highly recommended..."

From Publishers Weekly:

"Rose's matter and manner recall Lawrence Weschler's Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder, but Rose has a distinct voice and take on arcana, fictitious and otherwise."

From Borrowed Times:

"This is a great work of imagination. Thereнs more here than first appears, and itнs well worth investigating."

PRINT AND ONLINE LITERARY REVIEWS FOR THE SESSION

From The Miami Herald

Review by Andrew Ervin

06 April 2007

 

“Aaron Petrovich’s deliciously dark debut novel . . . is sold by content and not by weight. And what content it is! Some unsettling may occur. That’s because this little book is going to read you just as much as you read it . . . his ear for dialogue is astounding . . . the book is bladder-threateningly funny and unafraid to ask big questions . . . Petrovich draws vivid characters and establishes real tensions seemingly out of thin air. The Session is made up of the kinds of ides that will linger in your memory for days or maybe weeks.”

 

From The Chicago Reader - Spring Books Special Issue

Review by Peter Anderson

04 June 2007

 

Aaron Petrovich’s The Session is an innovative and compelling novella in dialogue . . . a sly mediation on truth and identity; Petrovich’s exclusive use of dialogue allows him to partly conceal some unsettling undercurrents and scatter subtle clues as to the real story lurking just beneath the surface.”

 

From The L Magazine

Review by Jonny Diamond

25 April 2007

 

“Much like Beckett, Petrovich aims at the accretion of atmosphere through the attrition of coherence and convention, as his two protagonists divagate through discussions of fact and process, using word games and puts to evoke a sensibility of dark, poetic unmeaning.”

 

From PopMatters

Review by Mary McCoy

11 April 2007

 

“Using only dialogue, Petrovich does an admirable job of creating a sense of place for The Session, as well as two distinct character voices . . . there is a great deal to recommend this book. Petrovich’s dialogue is linguistically playful, pith, and flawlessly paced. Together with Benes’s illustrations, the result is a darkly imaginative work of art.”

 

From Small Spiral Notebook

Review by Michael Signorelli

14 May 2007

 

“The Session places its reader in a state of perpetual readiness. It exudes a dark spontaneity that breeds a giddy fear and includes, among other things, the possibility of growing legs . . . Combined with Vilem Benes’ aptly off-balanced monotypes, Petrovich has crafted a work that bewilders, that echoes, that exists in gleeful solidarity, and that will draw its reader in a sharp intake of breath. He maintains a tempo of language that never falters and manages to shape layers of meaning and premonition from the raw material of speech . . . If the Detectives are not exactly Estragon and Vladimir, they might be cousins.”

 

From Diagram 7.2

Review by Matt Dube

04 May 2007

 

“It’s a deeply satisfying book: small but really appealing as an artifact, with its textured cover, its yellow pages and the monotypes facing pages of type.”

 

From Mary

Review by Evan Sicuranza

Spring 2007

 

“At his best, Petrovich approximates the absurdist wordplay of Beckett and Ionesco . . . the impulse toward wit dominates, and The Session’s more ornate flights into metaphysics or the epistemological value of truth . . . are always brought to ground by an impish, surrealist humor. The Session is a provocative, clever speculation on the themes of persona and knowledge, with touches of real beauty in the writing.”

 

PRAISE FOR HOTEL ST. GEORGE PRESS

 

“Hotel St. George Press, an imprint-of-sorts of Akashic, is a unique little web-dwelling/pulp-and-ink combination. Featuring, by far, the most unique, creative and rewarding web design of any online literary press in existence at the moment. Hotel St. George recently took step into the hold-in-your-hand publishing world with the publication of Akashic editor and Hotel St. George front-runner Aaron Petrovich’s first novel, The Session . . .  Aaron Petrovich is high up on his wordcraft. The Session is a brief head-trip, hand-held in a tentative and child-like fashion by Petrovich’s dynamic wordplay . . . Petrovich sets the standard for Hotel St. George Press as a place to go for wordy hoops, textual hooks, and the literary equivalent of sudoku.

--Russ Marshalek, Wordsmiths Books (February 2007)

 

“Hotel St. George is one of the more beautifully designed online lit sites I’ve seen—it’s definitely worth a visit . . . Its first title is Aaron Petrovich’s Beckettian dialogue The Session, a handsome little book that fans of Laird Hunt might like.”

--Ed Park, The Dizzies (March 2007)

 

“I recommend you check out the website for Hotel St. George Press.”

--Robert Birnbaum, The Morning News (April 2007)

 

“As an example of the kind of work that Hotel St. George Press, a new print outgrowth of Akashic, hopes to publish, I think [The Session is] an auspicious debut, and as their tag-line suggests, I’d gladly ‘book a room.’”

--Diagram 7.2 (May 2007)

 

“The Session is a unique take on the art press book and a strong debut for Hotel St. George Press. Their next publication, Alex Rose’s The Musical Illusionist and Other Tales, scheduled for release in September 2007, should be eagerly anticipated.”

--PopMatters (April 2007)

 

“As the first title from Akashic’s Hotel St. George imprint, which aims to match art with fiction, The Session fulfills the mandate admirably.”

--L Magazine (April 2007)

 

“[The Session’s} form, its pace, and its lightness (weighing in at a waifish 64 pages) make this a strangely potent debut by Aaron Petrovich from Hotel St. George Press, an imprint of Akashic Books.”

--Small Spiral Notebook (May 2007)

 

“Last week I was in New York visiting a friend and, of course, one of my favorite bookshops: Shakespeare & Co. [and found] The Session. . . Hmm . . . Hotel St. George Press . . . Haven’t heard of you. Looks . . . ‘Funny, frantic, and with a subversive intelligence . . . ‘ Yep! You’re mine little book! . . . Hotel St. George Press is cool. Cool? I suppose if I’m mindful of the inherent joys of higher verbiage standards and wish to honor literary correctness, I ought to be more careful with my word choices. I ought to strive toward something like the submissions suggestion made by Hotel St. George editors, who want material original enough to be an ‘antidote to—or at least a respite from—the numbing flimflam and simulacra which abounds elsewhere.’”

--Logostoni (May 2007)

 

 

PRAISE FOR AARON PETROVICH READING FROM THE SESSION

 

From Harriet, a Blog on Poetry

Award-winning poet/Calabash International Literary Festival Programmer Kwame Dawes

on Aaron Petrovich’s reading at Calabash 2007, Treasure Beach, Jamaica

27 May 2007

 

“It is just past midnight. From the seaward end of the tent, just at the edge of the stage with its rustic columns, its thatched roof, its gazebo-like utility when this tented area has been transformed back from a large hall filled with rows and rows of white plastic chairs into a thickly grassed sloping lawn; I am watching people greeting each other as if service has just ended and someone has said, “greet one another with a holy kiss”. Aaron Petrovich has just startled us with a stunning reading of a Beckettian-like stretch of complexly philosophical prose with the intensity and skill of a gifted slam poet—all from memory, no book in hand, just speaking in modulated tones, making characters come alive from his weirdly surreal novel The Session, and nearly a thousand people in the audience have taken the ride with him, laughing at the absurdist jokes, nodding at the twists in ideas, and applauding with force as he leaves them hanging at the end, saying: ‘And if you want to know who came through the door, buy the book…’ It is charming, it is a tour de force, and Calabash 2007 has just been launched.”

 

From The Jamaica Observer

by Darren Kahn

30 May 2007

 

“The programme distributed at the Calabash International Literary Festival, held from May 25- 27 in Treasure Beach, St Elizabeth, had the following blurb: ‘Akashic Books presents: The edgy Brooklyn indie press produces books that cut against the grain’. Of the three readers, none embodied this more than the last reader, Brooklyn native Aaron Petrovich.”

 

From The Oregonian

by J. David Santen

30 April 2007

 

“If nothing else, Brooklyn author Aaron Petrovich’s appearance at Reading Frenzy last week lived up to the venue’s name. The ‘reading’, selected, compacted and redacted from his just-published novella, The Session, set a rapid-fire pace . . . and then, as though snapped from a s?ance, Petrovich returned.”

 

From Baby Got Books

by D.J Cayenne

 

“Each of the writers was amazing, but the standouts for me were Aaron Petrovich and Kwame Dawes. Check out Petrovich reading from The Session. . . Aaron turned his reading into a masterful work of theatrical performance. There’s a guy who is one with his work . . .”

 

MORE PRAISE FOR AARON PETROVICH

 

The Session is a piece of art that needs to be seen to be believed. It’s a piece of work you’ll want to read, to experience, and then frame.”

--Russ Marshalek, Wordsmiths Books (February 2007)

 

 “The Session is a must read.”

--LaToya Rogers, Feminist Review (May 2007)

 

 “I enjoyed [The Session], and I recommend it to anyone that likes sharp, crackling (if nebulous) dialogue. I also recommend that you check out Petrovich if he’s reading anywhere near you.”

--DJ Cayenne, Baby Got Books (May 2007)

 

“Petrovich’s dialogue is like an existential Abbot  & Costello routine. There is a particularly funny passage involving a play on the words ‘patients’ and ‘patience,’ that reads like a vaudeville skit.”

 

--Nathan Cain, Independent Crime (March 2007)

 

“Tom Stoppard fans should take a look at Aaron Petrovich’s The Session.”

--Books are My Only Friends (April 2007)

 

“Aaron Petrovich channels Beckett and Pinter in this detective novella about the investigation of a murdered mathematician’s missing organs.”

--Willamette Week (April 2007)

 

PRAISE FOR HOTEL ST. GEORGE PRESS

 

“Hotel St. George Press, an imprint-of-sorts of Akashic, is a unique little web-dwelling/pulp-and-ink combination. Featuring, by far, the most unique, creative and rewarding web design of any online literary press in existence at the moment. Hotel St. George recently took step into the hold-in-your-hand publishing world with the publication of Akashic editor and Hotel St. George front-runner Aaron Petrovich’s first novel, The Session . . .  Aaron Petrovich is high up on his wordcraft. The Session is a brief head-trip, hand-held in a tentative and child-like fashion by Petrovich’s dynamic wordplay . . . Petrovich sets the standard for Hotel St. George Press as a place to go for wordy hoops, textual hooks, and the literary equivalent of sudoku.

--Russ Marshalek, Wordsmiths Books (February 2007)

 

“Hotel St. George is one of the more beautifully designed online lit sites I’ve seen—it’s definitely worth a visit . . . Its first title is Aaron Petrovich’s Beckettian dialogue The Session, a handsome little book that fans of Laird Hunt might like.”

--Ed Park, The Dizzies (March 2007)

 

“I recommend you check out the website for Hotel St. George Press.”

--Robert Birnbaum, The Morning News (April 2007)

 

“As an example of the kind of work that Hotel St. George Press, a new print outgrowth of Akashic, hopes to publish, I think [The Session is] an auspicious debut, and as their tag-line suggests, I’d gladly ‘book a room.’”

--Diagram 7.2 (May 2007)

 

“The Session is a unique take on the art press book and a strong debut for Hotel St. George Press. Their next publication, Alex Rose’s The Musical Illusionist and Other Tales, scheduled for release in September 2007, should be eagerly anticipated.”

--PopMatters (April 2007)

 

“As the first title from Akashic’s Hotel St. George imprint, which aims to match art with fiction, The Session fulfills the mandate admirably.”

--L Magazine (April 2007)

 

“[The Session’s} form, its pace, and its lightness (weighing in at a waifish 64 pages) make this a strangely potent debut by Aaron Petrovich from Hotel St. George Press, an imprint of Akashic Books.”

--Small Spiral Notebook (May 2007)

 

“Last week I was in New York visiting a friend and, of course, one of my favorite bookshops: Shakespeare & Co. [and found] The Session. . . Hmm . . . Hotel St. George Press . . . Haven’t heard of you. Looks . . . ‘Funny, frantic, and with a subversive intelligence . . . ‘ Yep! You’re mine little book! . . . Hotel St. George Press is cool. Cool? I suppose if I’m mindful of the inherent joys of higher verbiage standards and wish to honor literary correctness, I ought to be more careful with my word choices. I ought to strive toward something like the submissions suggestion made by Hotel St. George editors, who want material original enough to be an ‘antidote to—or at least a respite from—the numbing flimflam and simulacra which abounds elsewhere.’”

--Logostoni (May 2007)