THE COUNTRY OF ABSENCE

Name: THE COUNTRY OF ABSENCE
Author: Felix Stefanile
ISBN: 1-884419-28-3

by Felix Stefanile ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 2000

Accomplished individual poems that collectively offer an intriguing memory of where American immigrants have come from—and a...

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Stefanile’s collection is prefaced by an essay titled “The Allegory of the Hyphen.” In it, Stefanile claims that poetry serves as a linking “hyphen” that binds his Italian heritage to his American reality. This is a particularly apt introduction to his collection, because Stefanile structures his volume of new and previously published poems in a way that traces immigrants’ assimilation of America into their own ethnic traditions. The first poems offer glimpses of immigrants unable to accommodate their new American reality: “The Catch” offers a prose-poem harangue of a college student by his Italian-American mother, for example, while “Feast of San Gennaro” invites the reader into a celebration of old-world Italian culture. The poems synthesize the two cultures more deliberately as they slide into the rarified environment of WWII America. “The Dance at St. Gabriel’s” demonstrates a drive to choose new-world ideals in the face of Italy’s fall to Mussolini’s fascism, while “Soldiers and Their Girls” links that craving for international justice to all immigrant groups. Perhaps the most intriguing poem in the volume is “Hubie,” which examines aspects of the friendship between its Italian-American speaker and an African-American man serving in an experimentally integrated unit during WWII. In positing his volume as a statement on the immigrant experience, Stefanile expands the power of his poems beyond their individual bounds to speak of America’s struggle with its diversity.

Accomplished individual poems that collectively offer an intriguing memory of where American immigrants have come from—and a vision of the direction in which our diverse American culture could be headed.

Pub Date: May 15, 2000

ISBN: 1-884419-28-3

Page Count: 60

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2000

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

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A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.

"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

Pub Date: June 15, 1951

ISBN: 0316769177

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- SEEN & HEARD
Salinger Focus of NYPL Exhibit

- SEEN & HEARD
NYC Mayoral Candidates Name Favorite Gotham Books

- APPRECIATIONS
Holden Caulfield: Forever Young

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MAGIC HOUR

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

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Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.

Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.