Written in free verse and in mostly short lines, Ryan’s poems are spare, straightforward, and rarely lyrical. The best, like...
One of the younger generation of Australian-born writers, Ryan (who now lives in England) has published two books of poetry and a novel. A note in the recent anthology, New Blood (p. 434), describes her verse as “a flayed poetry, open to the shocks and pleasures of seeing and daily life, driven by a fascination with the shifting and precarious boundaries between the self and the world.” Here, too, daily life, marriage, motherhood, and the physical world furnish subject matter; however, instead of establishing a firm perception of reality, these everyday subjects continuously fool the eye. Describing objects in a painting of a tabletop by the 18th-century super-realist Boilly, Ryan observes: “It’s as if the picture / were failing / through lack of someone’s / faith / but who is it asking? / Who was that letter meant for / & what were the downturned cards / about to tell? / Our fingers want / to pick them up / but slip on glaze / rebarbative as mirrors.” A visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which was constructed in a circular shape rather than the traditional one of the cross, evokes thoughts of Escher, another maker of eye- and mind-teasing images. Ryan imagines early Christians on a pilgrimage to the Round Church: “Still they move round, / invisible, the blind / leading the blind / without falling, / their hope encoded, blunt / in Norman stone.”
Written in free verse and in mostly short lines, Ryan’s poems are spare, straightforward, and rarely lyrical. The best, like the two quoted above, make subtle connections between art and life, reality and illusion.Pub Date: May 22, 2000
ISBN: 1-85224-506-9
Page Count: 80
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2000
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
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