Intriguing poems about history and a warrior’s trajectory with a strong sense of pathos.
These collected poems trace a soldier’s lifetime journey and his experiences of peace and war.
O’Meara has written both fiction and nonfiction. This is his first book of poetry, arranged in roughly chronological order from childhood and adolescence to young manhood during the Vietnam War era and reflective later years. Besides movement along a timeline, the poems also track the speaker’s path to self-understanding, as mapped in the opening piece, “Starting Out.” This is a concrete poem whose diamond shape echoes the speaker’s ballooning self-importance —his “place in the history / of things”—that then narrows to a wiser humility: “Surprise, it was / never ’bout / me.” O’Meara’s voice is flexible, sometimes solemn, sometimes casual, as in “Michael,” set in the midst of the Vietnam War: “When I came back / Michael had been dead six months. / There were bands / playin’ in Central Park; / Jesus freaks were lovin’, / all the world was carin’.” The bright scene, the lines’ musical lilt, and the speaker’s slangy voice make a powerful ironic contrast with the poem’s bitter reflections, nicely capturing the speaker’s feelings of loss and anomie. Overall, the poems emphasize the pathos behind even the best memories, because their reality fades: “ ’Course all them ghosts, / the moms ’n dads, / the kids ’n friends, / they wander off.” On some occasions the poems can become sentimental, as in “For a Soldier”: “Remember him, / For, if he could, / His gaze would reach across the shores / And melt into your heart.” This idealized figure bears little relationship to the more authentic, badly frightened young soldier in “Nuts,” “who said / Cuttin’ ears… / was the way to go.” As for the book’s presentation, it could be more attractive and polished, such as using page breaks correctly.
Intriguing poems about history and a warrior’s trajectory with a strong sense of pathos.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 62
Publisher: Senachai Productions
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Endlessly quotable, highly entertaining, bordering on overly absurd, but perfect for book club consumption.
What do super-hot sorority girls and an assistant professor who’s a new mom have in common? Being a woman is hard.
Told from the perspectives of Sloane, a new mother experiencing an identity crisis, and Nina, a pledge sister at The House, the sorority that will be her ticket to lifelong success, Blake’s novel uses sarcasm, wit, and unwavering honesty to view the realities of womanhood—“femininity as a social construct and the ways in which it was an unsolvable curse”—through a satirical microscope. While Sloane and Nina, on paper, could not be more different, their lives are connected via The House when Sloane becomes the faculty adviser—“The House [w]as the ultimate safe place…something of near-magical significance. Sisterhood, Sloane learned, was a proper noun, as in: The House was a hearth for Sisterhood, where The Women grew into themselves.” The master puppeteer of this magical Sisterhood is Alex, a high-powered lawyer, single mom, and sorority alumni mentor who befriends Sloane as a fellow mom during a moment in need and draws her further and further into her influential circle. Alex represents women who have a seat at the table, women who are in control, who rise above the patriarchy. Sloane, jaded by the impossible ideal of the “Good Woman,” and Nina, enthusiastic to the point of desperation, are both drawn to Alex’s bewitching we-can-have-it-all aura, the unspoken mantra that hums through The House. However, the more they become entwined in the rituals of Sisterhood, the more they understand that beauty is just a facade and what lies beneath is much more sinister and downright surprising—you’ll see! The growing absurdism of the women’s desire to break the system, to achieve more, to rise against their common enemy—men—threatens to engulf itself during one final House dinner.
Endlessly quotable, highly entertaining, bordering on overly absurd, but perfect for book club consumption.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9781250883452
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
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