A vivid, compelling collection by an erudite poet.
A wide-ranging volume of poetry explores mythological figures, relationships, and the natural world.
Upton marries past with present, myth with reality, and ideas with emotions in this collection of poetry. Greek mythological characters feature heavily in the book. She depicts the murder of Hyacinth and takes on the voice of rape victim Danaë. Actaeon and Eurydice merit their own poems as well. Nature is another prominent theme. Upton considers noisy insects that “give the tree a voice” and wonders if it is fair to trick forsythia into believing it’s spring by placing it before a sunny window. Two sacks of mushrooms given a week apart inspire the poet to ask: “What other gifts are wasted on us?” The sight of a centipede in the shower prompts her to ponder: “How strange we must seem / to God. How sometimes we must / frighten him, how he must wish we would just / crawl away.” Intense religious moments, such as the stone in front of Jesus’ tomb being rolled away, and biblical figures, like Adam and Eve, are jumping-off points for other poems. As the book draws to a close, the author’s personal relationships become more prominent. In “The Blanket,” the poet considers her roles as a daughter and a mother and the ways they overlap. Upton is an austere but evocative writer. She details how the “milkweed blossoms / fade as if antique”; the way a willow “slouches as if it were in a classroom”; and the “pine’s greenness / frosted like a forged dollar bill.” The author is well read, as evidenced by references to everything from Shakespeare and Rilke to Shirley Jackson. Upton is also insightful; she wonders why “we give our hours away” to actors “as if our hours aren’t magnificent” and notes that “privacy is a kind of power.” Her honesty is unflinching, but she also injects humor into her work. In “Why Am I Not Invited to Your Party?” she recalls how she used to dance “like someone being stung / by ferocious bees.” The only time she goes too far is when she describes how “steam hisses off the oiled husks of him” and “flesh / slides to his ankles like a stocking” during the satyr Marsyas’ skinning. But even then, it’s hard to fault her for such skillful writing.
A vivid, compelling collection by an erudite poet.Pub Date: March 15, 2023
ISBN: 9781947817500
Page Count: 104
Publisher: Saturnalia Books
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
SEEN & HEARD
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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