Rochelle Hurt begins with the endnotes for her review of Jessica Bozek’s The Tales for Coldfront:

In the endnotes to The Tales, Jessica Bozek cites her seminar, Reading Disaster, as the impetus behind the book. The primary question raised by the book, however, speaks just as much to the problem of Writing Disaster. The act of storytelling is both destructive and constructive; narrative is a tenuous thread in the wake of disaster. The book’s title works in conjunction with Bozek’s short prose form to call attention to the idea of storytelling—but only to rub against the book’s fractured content. Through the perspectives of a lone survivor and various experts around him, an ambiguous apocalypse and its aftermath are recounted, but it is difficult to pin down a precise narrative in any one of the book’s tales. Bozek intentionally destabilizes her readers’ narrative understanding through shifting narration, fragmented detail, and uncomfortable questions about the nature of language.

Read Hurt’s full review at Coldfront.