A multilayered and often effective poetic exploration of the past’s effects on the present.
A collection of poems about history, family, and love by a millennial Romanian American poet.
The title of this book comes from a Romanian expression about delusion—a concept that the speaker in the title poem says she struggled with as she dreamed of a creative career. In “Equilibrium,” the speaker tells the reader ways that “Things could be worse”—from cancer-ridden parents to a lover leaving for the priesthood. A speaker reunites with an estranged cousin in a Camden pub to discuss troubled family ties in “Nu e rolul meu [It’s not my role].” “Under your mattress” explores a father’s notion that both money and secrets are meant to be stashed away. The seizure and torture of a speaker’s grandparents under Communism, and the legacy of paranoia it imparted on their descendants, are the focus of “Opening the Orange Envelope.” The all-consuming nature of new love inspires “Scumpul meu [My dear]” and “Înainte [Forward].” Bejan unpacks—and rails against—a toxic relationship in “#Simplicity” and “The Streets of Johannesburg.” She concludes with translations of a pair of poems by Ana Blandiana and Nina Cassian. In this book, Bejan centers her poems in a dazzling variety of settings, immersing readers in such environments as a U.S. military base on the banks of the Black Sea, an unnamed invitation-only island, and the “Strip-mall paradise” of Raleigh, North Carolina. In “Bucharest,” she describes in detail the “fumes of gasoline lingering amidst the general smell of pollution / Mixed with cigarettes, mixed with cigars, mixed with, pure, sweet and delicious B.O.” But when she turns her focus to her romantic relationships, Bejan occasionally slips into clichés, as when a speaker describes a lover’s inner light as “more blinding than the sun.” Other poems show notable boldness, however; one bravely catalogs the traumatic repercussions of sexual assault, and another boldly takes on Communism, calling it a system under which “Every man and woman were equal / Equally destroyed / Equally in fear / Equally invisible.”
A multilayered and often effective poetic exploration of the past’s effects on the present.Pub Date: May 27, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64-662219-1
Page Count: 46
Publisher: Finishing Line Press
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
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
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
