A varied but uneven poetry collection.
A debut volume of poetry embraces aging while mining memories for universal truths.
“I’ve grown accustomed to my fat,” notes Hood in the titular poem, a parody written with Mary Lois Hood Ketchersid, which opens the volume. “Why should I bother to reduce? / I’ve grown accustomed to the rolls that ooze over my belt / My jowls, my hips, my fifteen double chins / Are so familiar to me now.” Such acceptance is common in this collection, which Hood divides into three sections. The first contains odes to specific people and human relationships: a Sunday school teacher; a painter in Knoxville, Tennessee; ruminations on friendship, kindness, love, and God. The second section features poems composed in praise of objects and places: trees, spider webs, choir lofts, and instances of graffiti. “Each trunk and leaf whispers to me,” begins “The Singing Forest.” “My spirit’s fingers trace the giggling leaves / My tears form little rivers through bark canyons. / My eyes blink as they cross the slanting shafts of sunlight / descending through the gloom from high above me.” The third section, which the author calls “Puzzles,” includes narrative poems on subjects like apple and strawberry picking, a stroke, and even a neutron bomb: “A NEUTRON BOMB LANDED QUIETLY ON OUR CAMPUS. / LAUNCHED FROM A HIGH PLACE BY THE SYSTEM / WITH A TRIGGERING DEVICE DESIGNED BY ADMINISTRATIVE FORCES / A NEUTRON BOMB LANDED ON OUR CAMPUS.” Hood’s poems are generally free verse and composed of long, wordy lines that often read like prose. He sometimes achieves an economic thought or image, as here in “A Bushel of Apples”: “Every year the same sturdy cardboard boxes / to fill with firm, fresh apples. / Roll them in gently so they won’t bruise! / Be sure to give full measure!” More often, though, the verses are clumsy and discordant, relying on clichés or abstract language: “I feel America fading, / a country once borne strong / out of the womb of revolutionary courage. / The First New Nation / Free from the heritage of monarchy / not owing to any particular religious tradition.” Despite a few promising moments, the level of craft is not high, and readers will not find many gems in the work.
A varied but uneven poetry collection.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-949570-91-5
Page Count: 58
Publisher: Box Office Media Creatives
Review Posted Online: July 8, 2020
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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