A resonant meditation on rebirth and the enduring human desire for transformation.
A moving portrait of strength, renewal, and hope, told in narrative verse and prose poetry.
Lin’s work is a daring fusion of myth and memory, in which the journey of a goddess becomes inseparable from the author’s own. The collection carries readers through trauma and renewal in a haunting, lyrical exploration of resilience that lingers long after the final page. Structured into six sections, echoing the stages of life and death within the Tibetan Bardo, the book weaves together themes of identity, mental health, and spiritual transcendence. The poetic forms can be challenging—fragmented, elusive, and sometimes resembling shards of a broken mirror—but the disjointed style effectively underscores the work’s thematic concerns. Vivid imagery and striking metaphors ground the experimental framework, distilling recognizable human struggles into artful reflections. At its core, the narrative follows the Goddess Palden Lhamo as she traverses the underworld toward her next incarnation: Jodi, a transgender Pacific Islander whose life in the United States is shaped by trauma and abuse. (“The body she chooses is me,” writes the poet in an author’s note). Some poems demand slow rereading, while others drift quietly by. The collection is strongest in its more frenzied and unpredictable works, which feel as if the poet captured them in the heat of the moment. Beneath the rawness lies a powerful meditation on karma, regret, and the precarious nature of choice: “Karma is constantly changing,” the speaker observes at one point.“I missed my chance to be the sacred queen. I was scared. In a split second the fear changed my fate. Perhaps the consequence was life.” These moments crystallize the book’s preoccupation with destiny and its reversals, broadening into ambitious explorations of suicide, time, and rebirth. With works that slide through centuries, continents, and lifetimes, Lin shapes a narrative that feels both intimate and universal, telling deeply personal stories of illness, heartbreak, and strength.
A resonant meditation on rebirth and the enduring human desire for transformation.Pub Date: July 17, 2025
ISBN: 9781968528003
Page Count: 102
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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