The Rumpus // Irritant by Darby Larson
My review of Darby Larson’s Irritant (Blue Square Press) was published on The Rumpus on 8/15/13. Here’s an excerpt:
Larson has effectively opened up the field of possibility for how characterization can work. What makes a novel like Irritant so exciting—not that there are many novels like Irritant—is it widens the range of narrative possibility to include both information and exformation. The effect is absurd and maddening and intoxicating. The book doesn’t make sense in any traditional ways, and that’s entirely the point here. Or one of them.