A dynamic and accessible set of poems brimming with ancient lore.
Hartsock’s poetry collection combines musings on nature in the Great Lakes region, classical myths, and an account of struggling with chronic illness.
The wolf tree—that old, craggy giant of the forest—is employed as an elaborate metaphor throughout this collection, the author’s second after Bed of Impatiens (2016). Wolf trees are described colorfully in “The Wolf Tree in Film”: “Casting / shade for lovers or a villain’s fried chicken / lunch spread on gingham cloth, / and the treasure buried beneath its roots.” They harbor many kinds of life, so experts advise not to cut them down, and in the title poem, Hartsock links this idea to modern people with diabetes who live longer because of insulin (“And why/was I not cut down like the rest”). Another poem addresses the challenges of motherhood, including breastfeeding, which is connected to the ancient Greek goddess Thetis in the prose poem “The Nipple Shield of Achilles.” Always, the speaker is cognizant of her own mortality, as in “Musculature”: “Call its excess / Whitmanian, this blood / sugar of mine, that loafs at its ease / and sometimes in largesse.” A wonderful Western-genre anecdote turns into an imagined meeting of Ovid and Jesus Christ in “John Wayne Brings Wyatt Earp a Cup of Coffee”: “and the epic erotic tragic elegiac poet / locked eyes with the youth in a way / that made the sagebrush whir / and thrum below the signposts.” Hartsock’s exciting collection excels at moving classical figures and mythology into the modern world, using such varied devices as The Empire Strikes Back, and an Italian tour guide wearing Ray-Bans. Although the topics are serious, the unpretentious tone and flawless descriptions make this an engaging collection that confronts modern problems head-on. The incorporation of personal relationships takes the collection to an even higher level; Hartsock does it with such command that the effect is beautiful and jarring, as in “Marriage Bed With Medical Devices.”
A dynamic and accessible set of poems brimming with ancient lore.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2023
ISBN: 9781773491202
Page Count: 104
Publisher: Able Muse Press
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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