Read remarkable new fiction, poetry, translations, and serious conversations about literature in the Winter 2011 issue of The Literary Review, publishing international work quarterly since 1957. Refrigerator Mothers looks at the completely incomprehensible psychological archetypes and staggered creative momentum of motherhood, as well as outdated theories of psychosis.

The Literary Review: Refrigerator Mothers

Buddhadeva Bose

Jessie van Eerden

JENNY OFFILL

Rebecca Wolff

The Literary Review

James Scudamore

Kelli Russell Agodon

Charles Wyatt

Line-Maria Lang

Matt Bell

Ceridwen Morris

Jena Salon

Minna Proctor

Fairleigh Dickinson University

<p>In this collection of portraits, the eye is the vital ''lamp of the body,'' a spiritual organ van Eerden uses to craft essays that are as much encounters as they are likenesses, as much being seen as seeing. Historical subjects like Simone Weil and the Beguines confront the author's imaginative and intellectual being, while the viscerally close foci of family and a lost marriage must also be reckoned with. The author's religious tradition and the rural landscape of Terra Alta, West Virginia are two backgrounds that are neither chosen nor fully understood, but van Eerden's attention to these matters becomes its own form of devotion, a longing to see and to believe--the longing itself taking on the robustness of faith. This is the common goal of these essays, to fully meet each subject and return to it some form of wholeness, a quest full of lush imagery and insights.</p>

The Long Weeping: Portrait Essays

History

World

Orison Books

<p>In the drought-ridden mining town of Cuzzert, West Virginia--population 335--the only things that seem to change are the price of cigarettes and the roll call at the prison. Time has dried up like the rain, but two sisters, Aimee and Crystal Lemley, have set out to become prophets at Glorybound Holiness Tabernacle, the basement church where their father Cord Lemley was preacher. For ten years, the sisters have taken care of their mother, Dotte, while holding to vows they took as teenagers after their father skipped town: Crystal has kept silent, and Aimee has kept chaste. When the new teacher from Chicago, Aubrey Falls, attempts to reunite the Lemley family, he looses a flood of memory, misunderstanding, pain and grievance that threatens to swamp them all--unless Aimee and Crystal can see a path to grace.</p>

Glorybound

Literature & Fiction

Contemporary

WordFarm

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Books by Jessie van Eerden