Steeped in rich imagery and keen insight, Joseph’s poems make for a fascinating journey of faith, family, and culture.
A nostalgic collection of poems and short prose about the author’s Bene Israel upbringing.
In her opening essay, entitled “What’s in My Bones,” Joseph touches upon her childhood in Kolkata, India, within India’s oldest Jewish community, the Bene Israel. Acknowledging influences from British literature, American culture, world folklore, and more, the author sets the stage for the poems and essays to come. Most focus heavily on food, whether with detailed descriptions of the meal itself (“Let us heap the sugar-sprinkled poha / tall as a pyramid, mixed with shredded / coconut, precious dried fruit and nuts, / scented with the most fragrant / of spices…”) or reflections on the dish within its larger cultural context (“Sweet, some said it was, like wafers / and honey. Some said it was eaten / plain. Some that it was baked / on hot desert stones or made / into bread. Or added to bread. / Some said, like needles / of sea salt, it crumbled”). Other poems describe a melding of worlds, such as “Mumbai Goddesses,” in which the author recounts the first time her mother and grandmother introduced the idea of Santa into her childhood home. Joseph occasionally plays with form and spacing, forcing readers’ eyes to dart across the page in poems such as “The Angels of Konkan” and “What Ravens Do." Most poems are fairly short, no more than a page and a half, with the longest, “Leaf Boat,” spanning seven pages. Joseph’s words are simple and straightforward, although readers can peel back layers of meaning upon subsequent reads. The author quietly and expertly imbues even the most basic objects with meaning and efficiently uses plenty of mouthwatering metaphors to straddle both old cultures and new: “Sugar rose-tinted coconut milk thickening / tired arms bated breath silky cubes cooling / do spirits whisper old recipes / in a new land new life new history…” Her various reflections on the past prove to be both beautiful in form and broad in scope.
Steeped in rich imagery and keen insight, Joseph’s poems make for a fascinating journey of faith, family, and culture.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: 978-1952781193
Page Count: 66
Publisher: Mayapple Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.
Two brothers—one a lawyer, one a chess prodigy—work through the death of their father, their complicated romantic lives, and their even more tangled relationship with each other.
Ten years separate the Koubek brothers. In his early 30s, Peter has turned his past as a university debating champ into a career as a progressive lawyer in Dublin. Ivan is just out of college, struggling to make ends meet through freelance data analysis and reckoning with his recent free fall in the world chess rankings. When their father dies of cancer, the cracks in the brothers’ relationship widen. “Complete oddball” Ivan falls in love with an older woman, an arts center employee, which freaks Peter out. Peter juggles two women at once: free-spirited college student Naomi and his ex-girlfriend Sylvia, whose life has changed drastically since a car accident left her in chronic pain. Emotional chaos abounds. Rooney has struck a satisfying blend of the things she’s best at—sensitively rendered characters, intimacies, consideration of social and philosophical issues—with newer moves. Having the book’s protagonists navigating a familial rather than romantic relationship seems a natural next step for Rooney, with her astutely empathic perception, and the sections from Peter’s point of view show Rooney pushing her style into new territory with clipped, fragmented, almost impressionistic sentences. (Peter on Sylvia: “Must wonder what he’s really here for: repentance, maybe. Bless me for I have. Not like that, he wants to tell her. Why then. Terror of solitude.”) The risk: Peter comes across as a slightly blurry character, even to himself—he’s no match for the indelible Ivan—so readers may find these sections less propulsive at best or over-stylized at worst. Overall, though, the pages still fly; the characters remain reach-out-and-touch-them real.
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9780374602635
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
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BOOK REVIEW
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