GIVEN SUGAR, GIVEN SALT

Name: GIVEN SUGAR, GIVEN SALT
Author: Jane Hirshfield
ISBN: 0-06-019954-7

by Jane Hirshfield ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 12, 2001

Not to make her work too forbidding, it must be stressed that these poems are highly accessible. Their sense, however, does...

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Hirshfield’s fifth collection, and, as with her previous work the poems are simple, almost ascetic in structure and vocabulary—yet quite complex in meaning. (To borrow a phrase popular on Madison Avenue, they comprise a “high-attention product.”) Yet, unlike some of her academic contemporaries, Hirshfield does not engage in intentional obfuscation. Her purpose is rather to elucidate, and she does so with almost blinding clarity and sincerity. While she mentions Tu Fu and Li Po, she does not cotton to the faux Zen koans currently in vogue whose great truths sound like dialogue paraphrased from Kung Fu reruns. She has found her own truth and fashioned her own vessel for conveying it. Her specialty is the everyday object—a button, a pair of scissors, a spoon—and “their circle of simple, passionate thusness, their hidden rituals of luck and solitude.” While the philosopher may contemplate nature through detachment, Hirshfield gains her knowledge through familiarity, even intimacy, with it. The resultant verse is therefore sensual rather than austere. And because she is “not entirely embarrassed to be human,” she offers poems based on a soulful resignation to life’s dilemmas as opposed to a merely intellectual renunciation of them.

Not to make her work too forbidding, it must be stressed that these poems are highly accessible. Their sense, however, does not come to one in an epiphanous flash. Rather, it seeps into one's consciousness, like the aftertaste of some delectable morsel.

Pub Date: Feb. 12, 2001

ISBN: 0-06-019954-7

Page Count: 96

Publisher: HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2001

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.