I’m in the middle of writing a review of Robert Steiner’s Negative Space, after having read it twice. It’s a marvelous novella mapping the mania of a cuckolded man, featuring lyrically meandering sentences, like this one:
“Smoldering ruins can occupy a panorama the way from our terrace I witness the olive grove, and the sea beyond it, and beyond the sea the horizon that cuts it, and beyond the horizon the bleeding sun, but eventually even ruin is nothing but gravity.”
I’ve read a hundred books, so far, this year, and this short book was one of the best, and so, I highly recommend it. And I’m grateful to Steiner for writing it, and to Counterpoint Press for publishing it.
John Madera is the author of Nervosities (Anti-Oedipus Press, 2024). His other fiction is published in Conjunctions, Salt Hill, The &Now Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing, and many other journals. His nonfiction is published in American Book Review, Bookforum, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Rain Taxi: Review of Books, The Believer, The Brooklyn Rail, and many other venues. Recipient of an M.F.A. in Literary Arts from Brown University, two-time New York State Council on the Arts awardee John Madera lives in New York City, Rhizomatic and manages and edits Big Other.
