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Soul Might Make It Right

Name: Soul Might Make It Right
Author: Wendy Ann Warren
ISBN: 978-1-4257-6150-9

by Wendy Ann Warren ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 26, 2007

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This unpretentious collection of poetry is well-intentioned but fails to rise above its amateurish form and dubious worldview.

In her verse, Warren takes on big themes (e.g., failing marriage and religion) and more mundane topics (a driver making an illegal turn). She writes almost exclusively in rhyming quatrains; the first and second lines of each stanza rhyme, as do the third and fourth. For the first few pages, this scheme gives the poetry a sense of youthful breeziness; the poet revisits her childhood, when she sang about angels and birds and the drip of a faucet. But after 200 pages, the repetitive sing-song begins to grate, and the reader yearns for just a few lines of free verse. The rigid adherence to this rudimentary form forces her to come up with hundreds of rhymes, which proves here to be impossible. Forced into poetic corners, Warren fights her way out with invented words (chafely, wang, physiche foo, conditionair) and tortured inversions (“God surely would never kill you in the end / For even His ear does your sweet song bend”). This last line also communicates the volume’s underlying theology: God is watching out for all of us, and faith in Him will see us through; or, simply: “soul might make it right.” But while Warren is enthusiastic about the healing potential of her religious beliefs, she can be startlingly parochial when addressing other traditions. In Taliban in USA,” she says of Muslim “men of prayer” with “dark skin”: “Open minds are not found in this group / To say the least it’s always negative poop.” Leaving aside such ridiculously juvenile scatology, Warren’s limited generalizations about Islamic practice are at the very least disappointing. Another poem that takes on religious imagery–“Marriage Concentration”–is downright repugnant, beginning: “I know how you felt, you Jew / Inside a concentration camp or two / For I am with similar jail walls / A marriage, a dictator; I hope soon falls.” To compare a broken marriage to a Buchenwald or an Auschwitz is simply reprehensible. Simplistic, insensitive doggerel.

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Pub Date: Dec. 26, 2007

ISBN: 978-1-4257-6150-9

Page Count: 198

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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MAGIC HOUR

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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by Kristin Hannah

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by Kristin Hannah

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by Kristin Hannah

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

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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.