A clever but often shallow volume of rhyming political commentary.
A collection of satirical poetry that sends up current events, cultural oddities, and the misdeeds of President Ronald Reagan.
Taylor, a physics professor at Case Western Reserve University, wrote and recited most of these poems for the Signatures show on Cleveland’s WVIZ public television station from 1982 to 1984, presenting news of the day in a breezy style. This hodgepodge includes items of purely local importance, including the title poem, which riffs on a floating restaurant that sank in the Cuyahoga River: “Gourmets won't flock for a night on the town / To that mooring so damp and so foggy. / You can’t serve good food on a boat that’s gone down; / The french fries get terribly soggy.” More often, Taylor explores broader national and international issues, with a generally disapproving focus on Reagan administration policies. These include an episode connected to the Iran-Contra scandal when National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane secretly took a chocolate cake to Iran: “The President wanted the hostages freed / And he hoped that some arms he could barter, / So he said to McFarlane ‘Go see what they need. / Say I’m nicer than President Carter.’ ” There are also poems on random topics ranging from academic controversies over the “Lucy” hominid fossils to a sperm bank supplied by Nobel Prize winners: “Should not we rather try to find / More people who are good and kind?” Piquant black-and-white line drawings by the author’s daughter Camilla add visual spice to the text. For the most part, Taylor’s verse is pleasantly accessible, with lively meters and inventive rhymes; in an example of the latter, while spoofing U.S. military aid to El Salvador, he writes, “And if your strength should start to flag you are / Facing a new Nicaragua.” However, poetry isn’t the best literary form for addressing complex and much-disputed policy questions, such as the safety of nuclear power, and Taylor’s highly opinionated stanzas sometimes feel glibly one-sided.
A clever but often shallow volume of rhyming political commentary.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-62613-197-2
Page Count: 91
Publisher: ATBOSH Media Ltd.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.
A French art historian’s English-language fiction debut combines the story of a loving relationship between a grandfather and granddaughter with an enlightening discussion of art.
One day, when 10-year-old Mona removes the necklace given to her by her now-dead grandmother, she experiences a frightening, hour-long bout of blindness. Her parents take her to the doctor, who gives her a variety of tests and also advises that she see a psychiatrist. Her grandfather Henry tells her parents that he will take care of that assignment, but instead, he takes Mona on weekly visits to either the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, or the Centre Pompidou, where each week they study a single work of art, gazing at it deeply and then discussing its impact and history and the biography of its maker. For the reader’s benefit, Schlesser also describes each of the works in scrupulous detail. As the year goes on, Mona faces the usual challenges of elementary school life and the experiences of being an only child, and slowly begins to understand the causes of her temporary blindness. Primarily an amble through a few dozen of Schlesser’s favorite works of art—some well known and others less so, from Botticelli and da Vinci through Basquiat and Bourgeois—the novel would probably benefit from being read at a leisurely pace. While the dialogue between Henry and the preternaturally patient and precocious Mona sometimes strains credulity, readers who don’t have easy access to the museums of Paris may enjoy this vicarious trip in the company of a guide who focuses equally on that which can be seen and the context that can’t be. Come for the novel, stay for the introductory art history course.
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9798889661115
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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