Well-wrought domestic poetry set on an epic scale.
A fine collection of long poetry that follows two families’ lives in the American Northeast.
It wouldn’t be a stretch to call France’s book a domestic epic. His verse takes on the everyday challenges of family life in sweeping fashion, instilling the characters with a quietly heroic grandeur. The author writes in long, stolid bricks of free verse, and he builds his poetic house with meticulous care. Some readers may not be able to digest such a protracted, thick stream of words, but those who stick with it will be rewarded. In a series of long poems (or are they chapters?), the book tells the story of two couples–Em and Maria, Will and Petra–and their sons, Nils and Theo. France’s wide-ranging verse delves deep into the lives of this connected pair of family units as they deal with birth and death, love and loss. The author feels comfortable in houses, and some of his best verse involves thorough descriptions of the structures. An early evocation of one couple’s first home reveals his appreciation for the craft of building: “Original mahogany woodwork / and toilet tank too, sheet-lead lined / with push-button flushing. Original / plaster and red oak floors (that sagged …) / But solidly built.” Fortunately, France has as much respect for his own craft as he does for building, and he remains a scrupulous architect of his own poetic structures. There are few wasted words, and readers will quickly appreciate the author’s precise diction. France’s habitual economy of language is only infrequently sullied by the unnecessary prolix line: “your grandiosity / had never been more insuppressible!” says the narrator of the ailing Em. But such excesses are rare, and they do little to damage the high quality of the verse.
Well-wrought domestic poetry set on an epic scale.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-741-4433755
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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