paper 0-8071-2403-6 The third volume by LSU’s poet-in-residence is a curiosity of sorts: Owen invents her own easy genre, then works it to death in these formulaic poems, with little interior complexity or attention to language. The fifty here, most made up of seven short- lined quatrains, take as points of departure common figures of speech, then attempt to restore meaning to the lost metaphoric content. Thus, —The Fly in the Ointment— is stuck in a hell of filth; —That One Squeaky Wheel— gets the grease because it rightfully deserves the attention; and —Dead Reckoning— simply catalogues the many phrases incorporating the word —dead.— Owen also plays with morality tales by reimagining classic fables: The ant in —The Ant and the Grasshopper— adheres to its survival instinct; in the —The Flaw in the Flue,— the flea and the fly outsmart the flue’s cruel intentions; and the spider is quite considerate of the fly before eating it in —The Spider to the Fly.— A handful of poems reflect on Owen’s craft and its clichÇs; she asks us to consider the finality of —periods,— the quality of —ink,— and the idea of something —Written in Blood.— But her take on the phrase —Work Myself to Death— is pitiful at best: She wants us to feel the pain and suffering that goes into her unrecompensed art. The cleverest aspect of the title poem is its title: the idea of apocalyptic needlework has little to do with the poem itself, an abcedarium that comments on the visual traits of letters in the alphabet. Despite a few buried references to the environment, Owen seldom escapes her admittedly —cute language,— and few of her conundrums are as funny or inventive as you’d expect.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-8071-2402-8
Page Count: 63
Publisher: Louisiana State Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
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.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
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
BOOK REVIEW
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