Intricate, incisive writing that traces the fallout of the past and righteously rails against abuse.
Millikin’s poetry collection offers a powerful meditation on trauma and ancestral legacy.
The poems collected here evoke forgotten, in-between places; in these verses, the author’s trademark imagery of cold pine forests and dark motel rooms continues to abound. Millikin is a poet preoccupied with the often painful imprint left by family legacy that manifests itself across several generations; in “The Dark Birds,” she observes, “My father was haunted by the wars / in which his father fought….” The speaker continues, “He brought home the bad dreams of war, and I inherit them / through my father….” Abuse is another sickening inheritance, as addressed in the poem “Barbie Doll as Tutelary Spirit for the Too-Early Dead,” in which a father gives his daughter a doll to appease his guilt: “As a small child, you weren’t ready / for your father’s love. / But with the ones who lead you / to death, it is never easy, / touching the beauty of their offerings.” The poet often intertwines memory with natural imagery to render nuances of pain: “my father’s love, that ran too deep, / stung and burned by nettles on descent. / The Romans used nettles to march their soldiers through winter. / Nettles burn the skin creating painful warmth.” While Millikin’s poetry is intensely personal, in poems like “Trailer Parks” it also presents a broader truth: “The abused learned to accept abuse / that’s what I know from my childhood at the outskirts.”
The author has the ability to effortlessly locate complex emotional states. The opening of “Straight Line” advises, “To manage grief, cut your hair each evening.” The poet later goes on to declare that “All those years, I grew my hair longer, / preparing for what I’d have to face” (readers who have spent their lives braced for the worst will relate immediately to Millikin’s shrewd observations). Still, her writing can prove discomforting. There is a deep, artful sorrow in the manner in which the poet captures the passing of time in poems such as “Ocean Closets,” which suggests, “On a day of heavy weather, stay in the house, listen. / Trees stretch their branches into cries. Your child will grow up / leaving behind outgrown pairs of shoes for you to discard.” Elsewhere, the cautionary poem “Outskirts” describes a deplorably rapacious world: “If you are beautiful, they will rape you. / If you are strong, you will carry their burdens.” The poem “Outdoor Parties” observes, “If you don’t talk, no one will know / how strange you are, and they’ll like you / because you’re a pretty girl, with the right make-up. / I used to think it would work, following this advice / of my pastor uncle.” Millikin expresses horror over the idea of other women being manipulated and subjugated by men similar to her uncle; her thorough unpacking of how patriarchy operates is a call for other women to emphatically reject it. This collection demonstrates a profound understanding of suffering and resilience.
Intricate, incisive writing that traces the fallout of the past and righteously rails against abuse.Pub Date: April 27, 2022
ISBN: 9780877750802
Page Count: 127
Publisher: Unicorn Press
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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