An intriguing but inconsistent collection that explores the allure of bookstores.
A volume of short stories and poetry aims to celebrate bookstores.
After bumping into each other at Classics Books in Trenton, New Jersey, bookstore owner and writer Maywar and prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa decided to “collaborate on a collection of poems and stories that all take place” in a bookstore. The result is a volume of 20 offerings from various authors and artists that include poetry, prose, a play, and a scattering of illustrations. Following the introduction, the collection opens with a piece by editor Maywar (Running Flat, 2016) that alludes immediately to the magical quality of bookstores: “Everybody wants to pull a book in a bookstore and discover a secret passageway.” Komunyakaa contributes an extract from his book-length poem “The Last Bohemian of Avenue A,” a mournful paean to disappearing Lower East Side bookstores. A short story by Jeff Edelstein steps inside the mind of an impatient book collector. In a tale by Jackie Reinstedler, a bookstore becomes a family’s place of refuge from worldly worries. Komunyakaa’s poem is a standout piece; his writing is spare yet fiercely moving: “Lower East Side bookstores / are now gutted temples, / & when windows of St. Marks / were papered I felt the hurt.” A poem by Barry Gross effectively portrays the homely comfort drawn from bookstores. Regarding closing time, he writes: “I’m hoping he overlooks / and locks me in so I can make / a paper blanket of words / to feed this warmth.” But the collection lacks variety, with Maywar contributing nine of the 20 pieces. His keen observations are let down by tenuous metaphors: Bookstores are “powder kegs, ready to amplify whatever emotion you have when you enter one.” They often offer sentiments expressed by other writers, making the collection repetitive: “Used bookstores are havens for readers in an unkind world.” Still, the poem “At Classics Books” by Doc Long deftly captures the atmosphere of a bookstore: “Open any book” and sense “the sulk of wine and incense / all the way from Dakar or Tashkent.” But the evocative scent of biblichor permeates this volume all too faintly, proving insufficient to transport readers to their favored spots between the bookshelves.
An intriguing but inconsistent collection that explores the allure of bookstores.Pub Date: April 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-933974-32-3
Page Count: 88
Publisher: Ragged Sky Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
