Reviews

Marine Park: Stories by Mark Chiusano

clarkness's review

5.0

A strong debut. I was especially intrigued by the oft revisited brother characters. Chiusano does a beautiful job of fleshing out the relationship of the two brothers in a way that feels exactly like having a close relationship with a brother. Especially in the end, after seeing various characters from Marine Park, you get a sense for how people get stuck in neighborhoods and you can see how the older brother character might be drifting into a dead end. I wonder if this collection is more relevant in light of the sinister turn America has taken of late. How many people are born into a life with promise, but wind up stuck in their environment, unable to overcome inertia? I think at least some of the anger out there right now stems from this complex socioeconomic situation.

sshabein's review

4.0

This collection of short stories about a less popular section of Brooklyn came my way through a Penguin marketing email looking for book reviewers who might be interested. I neglected to do a proper review (my “being behind on reviews” tales of woe are best saved for another time), but I still enjoyed this book. Let it be known to the marketing people within publishing houses that those emails do their job because I’d never heard of Chiusano before that day, and I’m not sure if I would have noticed the book otherwise.

(This mini-review appears at Persephone Magazine.)