Review by New York Times Review
AUGUSTOWN, by Kei Miller. (Vintage, $16.) When Kaia, a schoolboy, comes home with his dreadlocks shorn off - a violation of his Rastafari beliefs - his town in Jamaica erupts, setting in motion a reckoning of the humiliations its people have suffered at the hands of the establishment, which they call Babylon. "Each observant sentence in this gorgeous book is a gem," our reviewer, V. V. Ganeshananthan, wrote. THE UPSTARTS: Uber, Airbnb, and the Battle for the New Silicon Valley, by Brad Stone. (Back Bay/Little, Brown, $17.99.) Stone, of Bloomberg News, offers a balanced view of these companies' spectacular rise: On one side, the disruption ushered in a new era of freedom regarding the services people use; on the other, the start-ups' growth represents "the overweening hubris of the techno-elite." THE ROMANCE READER'S GUIDE TO LIFE, by Sharon Pywell. (Flatiron, $16.99.) The plot of a purloined novel, "The Pirate Lover," runs parallel to the lives of Neave and Lilly, two sisters in working-class Massachusetts. An unusual narrative device - Lilly's sections are told from beyond the grave - helps keep the story interesting, and Pywell clearly has fun riffing on the romance genre's tropes and overstuffed language. THE STORIED CITY: The Quest for Timbuktu and the Fantastic Mission to Save Its Past, by Charlie English. (Riverhead, $17.) Timbuktu, in Mali, had long been home to thousands of ancient African documents on everything from politics to science to religion. When A1 Qaeda arrived in 2012, intent on destroying anything that did not adhere to its vision of Islam, a heroic effort was started to move and save the manuscripts. English places this story of Timbuktu's libraries in the city's remarkable history. SYMPATHY, by Olivia Sudjic. (Mariner, $14.99.) After Alice Hare, a lonely and adrift 23-year-old, arrives in New York from London, she becomes infatuated via social media with Mizuko, a Japanese writer. As Alice's obsession intensifies, she attempts to force a friendship - to a devastating end. This debut novel deals with the particular heartbreak of unrequited affection and jilted friendship in the internet age. AMERICAN ORIGINALITY: Essays on Poetry, by Louise Glück. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $16.) The author, a Pulitzer Prize winner and former poet laureate, assesses contemporary poetry in this brief volume, with an eye to broader questions of American identity. Our reviewer, Craig Morgan Teicher, praised the collection, writing, "In the guise of a poetry critic, Glück shows herself to be a kind of dark contemporary conscience."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [May 20, 2018]
Review by Booklist Review
National Book Award-winning Glück's (Faithful and Virtuous Night, 2014) poems are vital palimpsests; so, too, are her essays, penetrating inquiries stoked by immersive reading and rigorous thinking. Her second prose collection begins with two astute, mind-expanding dissections of two facets of our national identity and literature. In the title piece, Glück tests America's ardor for originality, which she freshly redefines and identifies as a source of hope and possibility, qualities essential to democracy. In American Narcissism, she considers how the American character is reflected in the projection of the self in the work of poets ranging from Whitman to Mark Strand, C. K. Williams, and John Ashbery. She writes of her joy in serving as a judge for major first-book poetry prizes and presents 10 expert and exuberant introductions to such exciting poets as Dana Levin, Spencer Reece, and Arda Collins. Glück then wraps up her incisive and sophisticated volume with piquant personal essays on writing for revenge and learning how not to fear happiness.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
Celebrated poet Glück's second book of essays is a study of contemporary American poetry. It explores the lingering and sometimes overwhelming influence of such figures as Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, as well as offering a generous introduction to several poets who are probably unknown to most readers. These introductions offer an open window on the current state of poetry and allow us the opportunity to peer inside, with the help of an intelligent and engaging guide. Glück's originality isn't so much in how she sees but in what she sees, and her openness permits her to observe things readers might gloss over. In particular, the essay "American Narcissism" is a masterpiece of critical insight, finding its most powerful focus in the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke in a moment of pure brilliance. Without denigrating Rilke's many gifts, Glück connects the voyeuristic trend in American poetry (a tendency to prize "fastidious aesthetics" and "the exposure of the secret") to his influence. VERDICT Seemingly free of literary prejudice or poetic theory, Glück looks at poetry with open eyes, seeking that which catches her off guard or excites her soul. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 10/3/16.]--Herman Sutter, St. Agnes Acad., -Houston © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A celebrated poet collects some recent essays on theory, craft, and other poets.In her second essay collection, after Proofs and Theories (1994), Glck (English and Creative Writing/Yale Univ.; Faithful and Virtuous Night, 2014, etc.), who has won about every major poetry prize, delivers a generous variety of pieces. Some deal with the current state of American poetry; some are admiring assessments of her fellow poets (Emily Dickinson, Robert Pinsky, Stephen Dobyns, Dan Chiasson); and one group of 10 comprises introductions to first books by new poets, artists whose work Glck has evaluated for various writing contests. These pieces, unsurprisingly, are uniformly laudatory ("mastery of tone and diction"; "haunting, elusive, luminous")though, as the essays clearly reveal, the poets themselves are hardly uniform. These pieces also feature many quoted passages. Of course, the more heavily theoretical pieces will appeal primarily to Glck's fellow poets and to the literati. The author observes, for example, that recent poetry "affords two main types of incomplete sentences: the aborted whole and the sentence with gaps. In each case, the nonexistent, the unspoken, becomes a focus; ideally, a whirling concentration of questions." Near the end are more personal essays that deal with Glck's childhood, her years in psychoanalysis, and her insights about the varying effects of happiness and despair on poets. She convincingly argues that happiness is the more beneficial, productive emotion, for it does not deny the writer access to the dark side. Another entertaining and revelatory piece explores the author's childhood revenge fantasies and how, uniquely, they accelerated her journey into the world of poetry. And there are smiles (maybe even a guffaw or two) in some of her observationse.g., that Rilke could be "oddly masturbatory." A love of poetryof the poet's lifeinfuses these essays and brings a glow to the theoretical and a bright flame to the personal. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
