Heavy emphasis on rhyming and simplistic subject matter will leave readers unsatisfied.
A young woman’s poems about nature, relationships and growing up.
The milestones and emotional tumult of early adulthood are well-traversed territory in poetry and literature. The work of classic heavyweights like Emily Dickinson and contemporary writers like Bret Easton Ellis touches on this trying time of life; additional examples of coming of age on the page are only as far away as the nearest creative writing course. Like multitudes before her, Scheidemann records her thoughts on love, nature and revelations about adulthood. Unlike many others, however, she infuses these musings with a streak of poetry devoted to cocoa-based food items, such as “Chocolate,” in which she writes, “Sweet, sweet chocolate—so sweet / You won’t ever fail to leave me / Such a lovely treat / Which always makes me full of glee.” “Brownie,” meanwhile, describes the eponymous delectible as “Brown colored / Really delicious / Often a favorite dessert.” Moving on to more weighty topics with “Shyness,” Scheidemann tackles adolescent awkwardness: “My shyness at first / Prevents me from things I want to do / Makes me feel cursed / And blue.” Her poetry varies widely in theme yet is simplistic in scope. She places primary focus on rhyming stanzas—a poetic style that lends itself better to children’s poetry rather than the young-adult audience she appears to address with poems about graduation and romantic heartache. While the poet’s enthusiasm is clearly evident, this collection reads more like a portfolio ripe for workshopping or the culmination of notebook musings and penned daydreams. As an aspiring author, Scheidemann would benefit from delving deeper into her subject matter, forgoing strict adherence to rhyming structure and further refining her writing skills.
Heavy emphasis on rhyming and simplistic subject matter will leave readers unsatisfied.Pub Date: June 16, 2011
ISBN: 978-1456462727
Page Count: 62
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An artistic rendering of male/female relations, questioning the ever-present power dynamics in life and love.
As much a love story as a brutal tale of BDSM, Darius’ first novel explores the limits of sexual appetite and its ties to wealth and power.
Professor Julian Darius plays with postmodern conceits as both the book’s author and main character. The fictional Julian has written a novel mirroring his own life and is concluding a book tour under the watchful gaze of a female stalker—a nymphet in a red hat who trails him from one bookstore to the next. Julian ultimately engages in a brief tryst with the underage girl before returning to his scholarly life in Wisconsin. His life is subsequently turned upside down when the 17-year-old Nonette arrives, insisting he become her Master within an explicit BDSM relationship. With the promise of teenage sex, Julian quickly agrees to the arrangement, despite having no prior experience dominating women in this codified way. Nonette describes herself as his “sussa,” and tells him that she is now his property, with no motivation other than to please him until she is dismissed. What follows is a tale reminiscent of Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, featuring a mysterious sex club in New York that allows its members to break any and every moral or legal taboo in the name of pleasure, with the threat of death hung like Damocles’ sword as punishment for both members and guests who dare to mention its goings-on to outsiders. Julian finds himself torn between the club’s sexual permissiveness and his culture’s prevailing morality, as well as his own desires and beliefs about men, women and power. Borrowing heavily from Nabokov, as well as the Marquis de Sade, the book brings philosophical debates to the surface, condoning the rape, torture and treatment of women as objects as much as it questions these acts. In the end, the reader is left to wonder what he or she might do in a similar position.
An artistic rendering of male/female relations, questioning the ever-present power dynamics in life and love.Pub Date: June 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0615630991
Page Count: 366
Publisher: Martian Lit
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A collection of anecdotes that, like many of the federal employees portrayed therein, work just enough to get by.
A wry insider’s view of the stagnant conditions plaguing governmental offices.
The image of government workers as lazy, ineffective and corrupt is a common one in popular culture. Roberge, now retired after nearly three decades as a civil servant, makes it clear that the majority of her colleagues did not correspond to this stereotype. Nevertheless, for the sake of entertaining material, she focuses on those individuals who hardly worked instead of working hard. Most of the (in)action takes place in Florida, which the author convincingly presents as a kind of hell on earth, complete with palmetto bugs, fire ants, alligators, heat and humidity. Roberge writes in a breezy conversational style, often laced with a raunchy tone. Addressing sexism in the workplace, she notes: “Most of the women I knew would shatter the glass ceiling legitimately, but let’s just say the ones I vividly remember, sadly, the stupid ones, all have glass in their knees.” Office nicknames inspired by the film Dances with Wolves are humorous; the author’s own, based on her conscientious yet futile attempts to navigate through layers of bureaucratic inefficiency, is “Screeches Like Owl.” One of her complaints about supervisors—“They don’t want to read what is written, but when they did, they’d pick something of little importance to question, like punctuation, or grammar.”—is rather telling, since occasional editing lapses in the text can be distracting. Overall, the book seems more suited to readers who prefer a series of vignettes with wacky titles instead of a sustained narrative thread. However, Roberge strikes a chord in the very last paragraph, where she connects a touching moment with her mother to the nature of the co-workers represented throughout the book. During one of their final conversations before her mother’s death, as they watch foolish people feeding the alligators, her mother remarks: “No, they shouldn’t feed them, but it’s not the alligators [sic] fault; they don’t know they’re monsters.”
A collection of anecdotes that, like many of the federal employees portrayed therein, work just enough to get by.Pub Date: June 21, 2012
ISBN: 978-0615610290
Page Count: 120
Publisher: BureauRat Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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