A sumptuous poetic romp through Italy.
Hill’s poetry collection traverses both the physical and intangible landscapes of Italy.
Italy is a feast for the senses in every aspect, from the food to the language to the clothes to the way the cobblestones feel underfoot. The author understands this, and her poems aim to, as she puts it, convey a “sense of being utterly enchanted…stuffed inside a satchel of American cynicism.” The poems fall into six categories largely delineated by geography; most of the verses have an epistolary quality. The poems’ speakers traverse the country’s landmarks and attractions, such as the Keats-Shelley house, the Domitilla catacombs, and the northern city of Bolzano. Hill celebrates these places with visceral esteem, using tactile images to convey textured experiences: “Stone / walls still held the warmth of afternoon sun…sweet perfume / of mountain elderflower, fresh green mint” (“Hugo”). The outsider/tourist perspective intercuts with evocations of what life may look like for locals, including nuns, blacksmiths, and the elderly. Hill plays with form, weaving in old styles like the sonnet and sestina with her largely free-verse works (some are even in Italian, with translations). The clear reverence for Italy does not undermine humor; one section, “Learning Italian,” tackles the tribulations of learning a new tongue and includes a jab at the language learning app Duolingo and its bizarre sample phrases (“The penguin eats fruit in the zoo”). Hill captures many small moments beyond the typical travel brochure epiphanies, ruminating on the gravitas of simply walking down the street, the beauty of “small green lizards, / red butterflies and dragonflies,” and the viciousness of a winding road. The poems reflect the introspection and self-awareness of a transient presence while commemorating everything from sprawling mountains to a simple glass of limoncello. Though there are some awkward phrases here and there, the collection largely succeeds in creating an immersive and beguiling reading experience.
A sumptuous poetic romp through Italy.Pub Date: July 18, 2024
ISBN: 9798322610588
Page Count: 84
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.
Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past.
McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781668098998
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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