'Sometimes you want to let yourself vamp for the cheap seats': Cally Fiedorek on prose style

Plus our next pick from the recent releases in literary fiction

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In today’s issue:

—’it was sort of this American hyper-realism, a caffeinated realism, like if Carver and David Foster Wallace had a baby—a style of prose so chiseled, so high-functioning, that bore such perfect witness to the author’s perceptiveness that it read more like an excellent example of New Journalism than fiction. As an intellectual spectacle, or as magazine writing, this style is perfectly great, but as an emotional and sensory experience, it lacks a certain grip and aura, a certain lived-in-ness’: Cally Fiedorek’s outstanding piece on prose style. We chose her novel Atta Boy as the best-written work from our recent subscribers’ submissions.

—‘it is the story of a small child who opens her mouth to sing after her home’s destroyed by a great flood and when she do…