My review of Laura Lippman's Lady in the Lake (Washington Post)

Super excited to see my review of Laura Lippman's latest, Lady in the Lake, in The Washington Post!

"Everyone knows the dangers of being in the news business these days, but Laura Lippman’s new novel “Lady in the Lake” is a powerful reminder that the search for the truth has always been a precarious and underappreciated one."

To read more, go here.

Review of The Summer She Was Under Water at Baltimore STYLE

Many thanks to Eric D. Goodman for his review of The Summer She Was Under Water at Baltimore STYLE!


In the compassionate and tender prose Michalski has become known for, she shares Sam’s desire to “save people from themselves.” Sam sacrifices her own emotional well-being to help heal her family.


To read more, go here.

Review of The Summer She Was Under Water at Atticus Review

Thanks to A. K. Small for this thoughtful review of The Summer She Was Under Water today at Atticus Review:

"Michalski packs a fascinating amount of material into four fictional days, all of which changes Sam’s perspective on life. Until this reunion, Sam had chosen to recoil from the nest, but the visit to the lake house wakes her. Michalski’s attention to detail and to the frail human psyche shines throughout these pages. There are no simple heroes or ogres here. Each character slips in and out of these polar opposite roles, exhibiting a complexity and depth, a beautiful gift in a novel. I also enjoyed the rich setting of the cabin, the lake holding its secrets, the parallels between what’s been drowned below the surface and what remains above it."

To read more, go here.

Review of The Summer She Was Under at Ploughshares

Thanks so much to Kira Frank for her review of The Summer She Was Under Water at Ploughshares:

 "...how can we heal when loved ones don’t even realize they’ve hurt us? Jen Michalski’s second novel is an intense emotional commitment, but a worthwhile one." 

 To read more, go here.

Review of The Summer She Was Under Water at Small Press Picks

Thanks so much to Small Press Picks for this smart review of The Summer She Was Under Water:

"In certain respects the very structure of the novel—the way it weaves together the present and the past, and draws on excerpts from Sam’s surreal novel—echoes Sam’s process of mulling over her past, with all its conflicts and confusions, and her efforts to come to terms with it. Although The Summer She Was Under Water provides no neat resolutions, it offers hope that people can find ways to move forward with the realities of their lives, with or without each other."

To read more, go here.

Review of The Summer She Was Under Water at The Rumpus

So excited to read Stephanie Bento's review of The Summer She Was Under Water today at The Rumpus:


"the story pulls the reader into a dark and uncomfortable place. This is where Michalski’s ability to engage the reader’s compassion and sensitivity is most profound. The Pinskis, to be sure, have their problems, but Michalski invites the reader to consider the family in a softer light as they navigate the currents of time and loss."

To read more, go here.

Interview and Review of Summer at Baltimore Magazine

I sat down with Arts & Culture editor Gabrielle Souza to talk about my new novel, The Summer She Was Under Water, for the November issue of Baltimore Magazine (in addition to the interview in both formats, there's also a review in the print edition):

"I think a lot of people and families everywhere deal with these kinds of issues that there aren’t easy answers for, and you just have to make the best of the situation."

To read more, go here:

Review of Summer She Was Under Water at Washington Independent Review of Books

I was surprised and flattered to read Emily Mitchell's review of The Summer She Was Under Water at the Washington Independent Review of Books today:

"In the novel as a whole, there is a scrupulous lack of sentimentality and no recourse to easy resolution or redemption. Instead, we see the way that, in the long arc of parental and sibling relationships, each change begets new complexities and entanglements. Even when you try to force a crisis or stage a reckoning, it does not always provide the catharsis you anticipate. 

Your relatives, the novel seems to say, whether or not you like them or accept them, go right on being your relatives, regardless. The result is a stark but absorbing portrait of the complex intersection of love, frustration, forgiveness, and anger that make up this — or any — family."

To read more, go here.

Review and Excerpt of The Summer She Was Under Water

The first read of The Summer She Was Under Water appeared yesterday at The Collagist. Michael Tager writes a stirring, lyrical analysis of brother-sister tensions:

"What is it about siblings that brings out the worst in people? Is it the way they entwine familiarity and contempt? Is it the inherent power dynamic that so often pits elder against younger? Maybe it's the favoritism that parents so often (and rightly) refuse to acknowledge but is still often self-evident. In the case of The Summer She Was Under Water, it's all of the above, and more."

To read more, go here.

Also, at The Nervous Breakdown, you can find an excerpt of Summer:

"Everything feels all right, right now. Perhaps Steve would be lighthearted and charming and teasing and they’d spend their days trying to fish and maybe they’d fish for their father’s old beer cans and the lost city of Conowingo. And Steve would be the person Sam always hoped he would be, was capable of being, and maybe their family would close ranks around each other and there would be a tacit understanding that they each would rise their tide a little and all their boats would float comfortably, not mired in the muck or run ashore. If they all did their part and dammed their happiness in, here, this summer, there would be plenty to drink from, to siphon, in the lean times."

To read more, go here.

New Review of From Here at The Next Best Book Blog!

I have never thought my stories were a parade of subtle suffering, but I do think the unrequited life makes a good story. Glad the folks at The Next Best Book Blog agreed with me!

I was a little nervous at first, reading their review of From Here:

Her stories are like a never ending parade of subtle suffering. In them, she forces her characters to live with their loneliness. She traps them in abusive relationships and broken homes. She smacks them in the face with unrequited love. She punishes the fathers - they are dead or dying, withering away from cancer. Or they are just a bunch of deadbeats, walking away from their pregnant wives and drinking themselves silly. And she punishes the animals too. As with any other author, dogs, rabbits, birds, beware. Your lives are not safe in her hands!

But I am glad they still linger, even after the unexpected stab:

Each story has a strong sense of place and Jen douses her characters will their own unique voice. The collection reads quickly but the stories have a tendency to linger. They remain in the periphery, haunting the sidelines. They are tender and hesitant. Michalski seems reluctant to allow them to let go, and so they ache within you long after their stories are over.

To read more, go here.

New review of From Here at Back of the Book!

Thanks so much to Carly Szabo for her wonderful review of From Here at Back of the Book:

Overall, Michalski's From Here is a powerful collection of fiction that successfully creates and explores the lives of an array of characters. So insightful and deliberately crafted is each story that the reader almost feels as if these tales are nonfictional. While each story leaves one fulfilled and greatly impacted, it is difficult for the reader to abandon the character to whom they’ve grown so attached in place of the next to come.

To read more, go here.

Review of From Here in Baltimore City Paper

A new review of From Here posted today in the Baltimore City Paper:

It’s the sort of witty, on-point observation that populates all of the short stories in “From Here,” which depict a huge range of characters and situations, all of them inspecting the ideas of dislocation, belonging, and the meaning of home from a different angle. While the perspectives vary, they’re all told through the lens of Michalski’s sharp eye for detail and beautiful prose. 

And this:

It culminates with a beautiful, devastating finish, the sort that left me rereading the last paragraph over and over with my breath hitched in my chest. 

Thanks, Anna March and the City Paper, for such an insightful piece. You can read the whole review here.

The Sunday Rumpus Book Review of From Here

So excited to see From Here reviewed by Heather Partington in this past Sunday's Rumpus Book Review! I have been such a fan of the site for the last five years (even while writing for its semi-competitor, The Nervous Breakdown), and it's a dream come true to see my name on the site (with such kind words from Partington, to boot):

Many authors’ stories blend together across a collection; they struggle to convey a unique voice in each piece. Not so with Jen Michalski’s From Here. Though her characters share common experiences—dashed hopes, disappointments, misunderstanding by loved ones—the voice in each story of From Here is fresh and specific.

and

Jen Michalski excels in subtlety that is made possible by her nuanced understanding of voice.

Yay! To read more, go here.

Review of The Tide King in Entropy Magazine

So excited to read this review of The Tide King by Meg Tuite in Entropy Magazine!

When I first started reading Michalski’s novel I thought, oh, no, a war story. There were only a few of those that had mesmerized me, of late, like Tim O’Brien’s, The Things They Carried. But, Michalski is as much a master as O’Brien. She wrapped me easily inside her extraordinary storytelling and inimitable cast that held me captive in a world I wasn’t sure could take me down and then wasn’t sure I wanted to resurface from. As a writer, I wanted to decipher this phenomenon of layers and structure that created this magic, but the reader in me was traveling with the plot and easily let go of that and rode with her as it unfurled. Then, I read it again.

To read more, go here.

Review of The Tide King at Gently Read Literature

Thanks to Bonnie ZoBell for this wonderful, astute review of The Tide King in the Spring 2014 Gently Read Literature that evokes the great writers of magical realism:

One can't help invoking Gabriel Garcia Marquez and his earthy little villages being visited upon by flamboyant angels with crooked wings falling to the earth and how real-life folks would react to such an abnormality. Or perhaps Luis Urrea, who has said when people call his book magical realism that it really isn't, for the miracles he writes about in his fiction did happen and are documented.

You can read the full review here (with a $4.00 purchase price of the issue).

Review of The Tide King in Fjords Review

Excited to wake up to this review of The Tide King in the great Fjords Review. Thanks to Natalie Sypolt for writing such a thoughtful, in-depth analysis:

The Tide King is a complex book that examines both the evils that people can do to one another, as well as the beauty that is possible. In these pages, the reader is asked to consider all the things that make us uncomfortable-war, sickness, suffering, and death-but we’re also treated at the end to hope.

and

In the hands of a less capable writer, the reader might object to these unconventional story lines; however, Michalski handles them with great empathy and grace. We are left no choice but the embrace the fallibility of the protagonists and root for their successes.

To read more, go here.

Review of The Tide King in New Madrid Journal

So cool to read this review of The Tide King in the New Madrid Journal, the literary magazine of the low-res MFA program at Murray State:

Michalski may claim to have been a bad poet, but her prose clearly holds the rhythm and beauty of poetry, and her novel is a joy to read.Once I started reading it, I couldn’t put it down. She has touched the world of Fantasy gently, creating a story anchored in reality, with a hint of mystery.

To read more, go here.

Review of The Tide King at Heavy Feather Review

Merridawn Duckler writes a very astute review of The Tide King for Heavy Feather Review.

Magic and fantasy, the supra and the supernatural are having a good long run in modern fiction. I approve of blurred lines among genre but—grumpy cat impersonator that I am—nothing entrances me less than the promise that I shall be entranced....This grouchy intro is all by way of suggesting there is an alternative. One could write a novel with vivid, dimensional characters that are all kinds of human, caught up in a story that defies logic but not sense. For that experience you might want to read Jen Michalski’s wonderful, and yes, magical novel The Tide King.

and

And as pieces fit into this sophisticated and brilliant puzzle of a novel, it is the stories that draw us in, as well as the real problems of characters we come to know through the writer’s skill.

My week has been made, and it's only Monday. ;) To read more, go here.

8/21/13: Review of The Tide King in The Baltimore City Paper

Photo: Rebecca
 Lord

This is one of those reviews that you read over and over when you feel like a complete failure and will never get anything right. Thanks, Baynard Woods, for this little slice of happiness:

The story is as old as the Epic of Gilgamesh, which also features an herb of immortality, and, in this gorgeous novel, Jen Michalski tells it as well as anyone ever has.

To read more, go here.

7/19/13: Review of The Tide King at Prime Number Magazine

Curtis Smith reviewed The Tide King today at Prime Number Magazine. He said a lot of nice things:

As a reader, I find myself drawn to the shape of fiction. Every story needs a vessel, and the structure of The Tide King is one of its strongest and most fascinating elements. The story weaves in and out of time, seemingly disparate narratives which in time come together, linking past, present, and future. At times, we are left guessing—only in the best of ways—as we are exposed to clues and hints of the larger picture waiting to unfold. There are “a-ha” moments when the elements click, realizations that are never forced or leave us scratching our heads. Like the tide itself, the ending returns us to the beginning, a deft bit of craft that reinforces the feel of the narrative.

To read more, go here.