REVIEW: Zone One, by Colson Whitehead

Over at Hipster Book Club my review of Zone One by Colson Whitehead is up.

This marks two and a half years that I have officially been crushing on Colson Whitehead.

Check out my review here.

And check out Michelle Lipinski’s even better review of The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides here.

This is also a sad occasion, because it marks the final issue of Hipster Book Club. Back in 2007 I was raving to Matt Tanner about a story in The Paris Review called “Refresh, Refresh” by Benjamin Percy. Matt went to Book Expo America and grabbed an advance copy of Percy’s story collection, which is also called Refresh, Refresh. He gave it to me. I wanted to do something about it. I had finished grad school and was ready for a new task. Earlier I had come across a review of an obscure book at Hipster Book Club, which I had never heard of. But I noticed they were open to working with new writers. I sent Yennie and Kyle a mostly finished review of Refresh, Refresh, which Yennie edited thoroughly. It turns out we had both studied literature at UC San Diego with Eileen Myles. And that’s it. Over the next four years I contributed twenty-one reviews and one essay to Hipster Book Club, plus other little things here and there. They hooked me up with a shit-ton of free books, which is all I was really hoping for. And they were a big inspiration to start Fiction Advocate.

Farewell, HBC! So long, and thanks for all the books!

Brian Hurley

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