A tender, insightful reflection on everyday wonders of life with grandchildren.
Foley offers a collection of free-verse poems about the beauty and awe of grandparenthood.
The book opens with a scene of a newborn daughter, Eleanor, on a mother’s chest, with the grandparent speaker experiencing sympathy twinges in her own womb (“Grandmothers”). Another poem prays for infants in their “sheltering globes” in an intensive care unit, where “my first grandchild” was treated (“Neonatal ICU Prayer”). In “Alternate Reality,” set at Christmastime, a 2-year-old granddaughter, Evelyn, misidentifies a sanitation worker as Santa Claus while on a wintry walk. During the Covid-19 pandemic, a speaker struggles to connect with her granddaughter over a video call and longs for in-person outings (“Grandparenting in the Time of Covid-19”). Foley shares other snapshots of life as a grandmother, from nature walks to quirky conversations to meals with grandchildren. Poems marvel at grandchildren’s wisdom; in “On the Eve of June,” when a dog dies, a granddaughter tells the speaker that the pup “has just gone home— / her old one.” Foley concludes with a fantasy of leaving the “uncivil world” behind to lead a more serene life, devoted to raising grandkids and appreciating the beauty of nature with them (“Holiness”). Overall, Foley’s poems are concise and sincere. She acutely captures youngsters’ silly speech, and the works effectively evoke the speakers’ surroundings; a pushy midwife at a granddaughter’s birth, she writes, “herds us like livestock / back to our holding pen, / to lap stale coffee” (“Grandmothers”). Some readers may find the collection’s depiction of grandparenthood to be somewhat idealized, as it glosses over many of the role’s emotional and physical challenges. However, the poet repeatedly transforms quotidian moments into soulful meditations; for example, upon spotting a granddaughter’s parents greeting the toddler from a window, a speaker tells readers, “Imagine / seeing your reason for being, / framed, like a photograph, / waving and smiling at you” (“Imagine”).
A tender, insightful reflection on everyday wonders of life with grandchildren.Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2025
ISBN: 9781956285819
Page Count: 58
Publisher: The Poetry Box
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Top Chef fans might savor this detailed account, but others will find it bland.
The Top Chef host describes her journey to new heights.
For those who don’t know, Kish is a “gay Korean adopted woman, born in Seoul, raised in Michigan” and “a chef, a character, a host, and a cultural communicator—as well as a human being with a beating heart.” Though this book covers every step of her journey, every restaurant job and television role, and also discusses her experience as an adoptee (very positive) and a queer woman (late bloomer), the storytelling is so straightforward, lacking in suspense, character development, or dialogue, that it is basically a long version of its (longish) “About the Author.” Seemingly dramatic situations are not dramatized—when she was eliminated on her first Top Chef run, she assures us that she did the best she could, and drops it. “I can spare you the gory details (bouillabaisse and big personalities were involved).” Later, she cites a belief in protecting the privacy of others to omit the story of her first relationship with a woman. With no character development, neither does the reader get to know those who fall outside the privacy zone, like her best friend, Steph, and her wife, Bianca. When she gets mad, she says things like, “It’s a gross understatement to say I was crushed, beyond frustrated, and furious with the situation.” The fact that “I’ve never been a big reader” does not come as a surprise. It is more surprising when she confesses that “I believe the universe is selective about the moments in which it introduces life-changing prospects.”
Top Chef fans might savor this detailed account, but others will find it bland.Pub Date: April 22, 2025
ISBN: 9780316580915
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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