Weighty, unflinchingly honest writing that sometimes takes an unfortunate discriminatory tone.
McCormick’s keenly observed if unsettling debut poetry collection reflects on death and illness.
“Who wants to hear how mellow you feel, / and who wants to write about it?” asks McCormick in a poem entitled “Mellowed Out.” The collection, written over the last three and a half decades, has few moments of levity; the poet, instead, steels himself to face the darker aspects of human existence. The foreboding opening poem, “Great Decisions,” approaches the failings of humankind—particularly those of governments—and underlines a necessity to change or perish: “The air we breathe is turning us gray. / We must decide if we will stay.” “The Ending” has a significantly more intimate tone in its examination of a relationship breakdown: “It’s like I said hello, / and you were dead, / and you never heard what I said.” McCormick’s focus continues in this manner, zooming in to explore personal relationships—an elegy for a friend dying of AIDS or a prose poem in the form of a spiky “Conversation Between Spouses”—before drawing out to address universal questions such as the pursuit of success, midlife crisis, and the absence of God. McCormick’s writing is frank and uncompromising. In the deliciously cynical poem, “Getting Old,” he observes: “You see a new beauty in nature. / You hear peace and quiet. / The reasons are your vision has blurred / and your hearing has failed.” He possesses the rare ability to capture emotions and sensations effortlessly. “Holding On” pinpoints the shifting state of depression: “In the best of times, the cold, broad sword of / boredom lies across my chest and makes me afraid to move.” McCormick’s approach toward race, however, is disconcerting. In the poem “Chinese People,” for example, the narrator says, “I can’t decide whether they have short legs or long bodies.” The poem unsatisfactorily tries to make amends by asking “Imagine if I were looking through their eyes.” Similarly, New York City is declared as the “Brownest damned place I’ve ever seen,” and McCormick suggests that a “Klanner would be freaked-out there. / A dedicated member would have to wear two hoods.”
Weighty, unflinchingly honest writing that sometimes takes an unfortunate discriminatory tone.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 364
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.
Inspired by David Copperfield, Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South.
It’s not necessary to have read Dickens’ famous novel to appreciate Kingsolver’s absorbing tale, but those who have will savor the tough-minded changes she rings on his Victorian sentimentality while affirming his stinging critique of a heartless society. Our soon-to-be orphaned narrator’s mother is a substance-abusing teenage single mom who checks out via OD on his 11th birthday, and Demon’s cynical, wised-up voice is light-years removed from David Copperfield’s earnest tone. Yet readers also see the yearning for love and wells of compassion hidden beneath his self-protective exterior. Like pretty much everyone else in Lee County, Virginia, hollowed out economically by the coal and tobacco industries, he sees himself as someone with no prospects and little worth. One of Kingsolver’s major themes, hit a little too insistently, is the contempt felt by participants in the modern capitalist economy for those rooted in older ways of life. More nuanced and emotionally engaging is Demon’s fierce attachment to his home ground, a place where he is known and supported, tested to the breaking point as the opiate epidemic engulfs it. Kingsolver’s ferocious indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, angrily stated by a local girl who has become a nurse, is in the best Dickensian tradition, and Demon gives a harrowing account of his descent into addiction with his beloved Dori (as naïve as Dickens’ Dora in her own screwed-up way). Does knowledge offer a way out of this sinkhole? A committed teacher tries to enlighten Demon’s seventh grade class about how the resource-rich countryside was pillaged and abandoned, but Kingsolver doesn’t air-brush his students’ dismissal of this history or the prejudice encountered by this African American outsider and his White wife. She is an art teacher who guides Demon toward self-expression, just as his friend Tommy provokes his dawning understanding of how their world has been shaped by outside forces and what he might be able to do about it.
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-325-1922
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.
Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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