THOUGHTS OF INDIFFERENCE

Name: THOUGHTS OF INDIFFERENCE
Author: Coed Bedlam Jones Flello
ISBN: 978-1468019476

by Coed Bedlam Jones Flello ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 1, 2011

Toward the end of this haphazard collection, biographical statements hint at difficulties the author has overcome; it’s hard...

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Flello’s debut poetry collection is a meditation on life, love and nature.

Readers looking for substance and insight as well as those hoping for escape may balk at something calculated to arouse indifference. Nor is indifference what Flello’s collection of poetry generally explores. The first half of this volume is primarily a repetitive series of the sort of sentiments found in greeting cards, such as “For this and all your love, I hold you in love’s hope dreams my beautiful darling”; “I paint your name across my dreams”; and “Trust my life. Trust my love. It’s all for you.” A few more substantive and unusual sentiments are eventually evoked, such as when the author muses: “If you see me with tears in my eyes, and we are not bound with the closeness of love, then I will kill you.” The latter part of the collection is more varied and interesting in its topics and language, employing rhyme, stronger meter and deliberate rhythm. Standout lines include “A Gypsy jazz queen will sing you a song, about / the children and where they have gone. / A knight in armour that’s shining of course, he / will let you down but he’s full of remorse.” Along the way there are some truly arresting and engaging ideas about nature, as well; Flello addresses the possibility of further integrating nature into our worldview: “Gonna buy myself a wind farm, and stick / it in a tree, then light up all the lovely trees / so all the world can see.” But the poet quickly abandons rather than develops such ideas with a throwaway line, “Just shows what happens when you are bored.” It’s unfortunate, as moments like this suggest a truly unique sensibility.

Toward the end of this haphazard collection, biographical statements hint at difficulties the author has overcome; it’s hard not to be intrigued by what he might write in a more direct, focused autobiography.

Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2011

ISBN: 978-1468019476

Page Count: 150

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: March 15, 2012

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.

Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-609-60737-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.