by G.H. Mosson ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 8, 2019
A profound and heartfelt meditation on the meaning of parenthood.
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A collection of poetry for children and adults explores family ties.
The first section of this volume consists of blackout poetry for adults. The speaker awaits spring in “I” and imagines a perfect morning in “III.” He wonders how he became a 38-year-old father of two in “V” and contemplates midlife in “X.” His “firecracker daughter” and her “volcano of energy” are the focus of “VII” while in “XIV,” the two talk about what their lives will look like when they’re both older. A moonlit stroll with the children inspires “IX.” He questions how one becomes “planted, rooted, sun-filled, lazily arrived” in marriage in “XVI.” Mosson composes a pair of message-in-a-bottle–style poems, one each for his daughter and son, in “XXVII” and “XXVIII.” The book’s second section contains traditional, shorter poems for children, including several pieces about the beauty of the moon as well as a celebration of the sunrise. The poet also touches on the struggle of kids to sleep at night and the calming power of maternal snuggles. Mosson has been nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize, and it is easy here to see why. His language is vibrant, as when he wishes for his “sleepy daughter to droop / into the living room,” describes how his children “tumble in squeals” on the porch, and recalls how his son “stomped to the playground steps with a wild surmise.” Many of the sentiments in these poems will be intimately familiar to parents: “I want / what’s wonderful for my children / silence behind eyelids when I sleep / pre-dawn with coffee and books to stretch out forever.” Mosson’s writing is steeped in tenderness, evident in lines like “I always thought / imagination meant walking in a moonlit field weeping.” The collection’s one flaw is the inclusion of notes—such as “Leave it raw? Is less, more?”—at the end of many poems. While revealing artistic vulnerability, the notes will make readers second-guess the author’s choices along with him and detract from the stunning conclusions of the poems.
A profound and heartfelt meditation on the meaning of parenthood.Pub Date: March 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63-534849-1
Page Count: 42
Publisher: Finishing Line Press
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
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A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
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by Percival Everett ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 19, 2024
One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him.
Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as told from the perspective of a more resourceful and contemplative Jim than the one you remember.
This isn’t the first novel to reimagine Twain’s 1885 masterpiece, but the audacious and prolific Everett dives into the very heart of Twain’s epochal odyssey, shifting the central viewpoint from that of the unschooled, often credulous, but basically good-hearted Huck to the more enigmatic and heroic Jim, the Black slave with whom the boy escapes via raft on the Mississippi River. As in the original, the threat of Jim’s being sold “down the river” and separated from his wife and daughter compels him to run away while figuring out what to do next. He's soon joined by Huck, who has faked his own death to get away from an abusive father, ramping up Jim’s panic. “Huck was supposedly murdered and I’d just run away,” Jim thinks. “Who did I think they would suspect of the heinous crime?” That Jim can, as he puts it, “[do] the math” on his predicament suggests how different Everett’s version is from Twain’s. First and foremost, there's the matter of the Black dialect Twain used to depict the speech of Jim and other Black characters—which, for many contemporary readers, hinders their enjoyment of his novel. In Everett’s telling, the dialect is a put-on, a manner of concealment, and a tactic for survival. “White folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don’t disappoint them,” Jim explains. He also discloses that, in violation of custom and law, he learned to read the books in Judge Thatcher’s library, including Voltaire and John Locke, both of whom, in dreams and delirium, Jim finds himself debating about human rights and his own humanity. With and without Huck, Jim undergoes dangerous tribulations and hairbreadth escapes in an antebellum wilderness that’s much grimmer and bloodier than Twain’s. There’s also a revelation toward the end that, however stunning to devoted readers of the original, makes perfect sense.
One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780385550369
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
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