An often vivid but overlong set of works about America’s idols.
A massive collection of long-form poems inspired by legendary American figures and folklore.
This magnum opus of poetry is divided into 10 sections, with the first, “U. S. Rivers: Highway 1,” describing the path on the titular road from Key West, Florida, to Maine. Each state contains its own rich history that plays a part in the country’s larger narrative. “Old California” is a subtly comedic take on that state’s residents, with a special focus on Monterey. “Paul Bunyan” retells the story of the mythical lumberjack while “John Henry” catalogs the life and death of that steel-driving man in a rhyming, songlike structure. War and its legacy are at the center of “Chief Joseph,” and the Wild West features heavily in “Wyatt Earp.” The circus comes to town, with all its hyperbole and mischief, in “P. T. Barnum,” and a ghost laments that Amelia Earhart’s death is a key aspect of her fame in a section named after the doomed aviator. “Blue Ridge” is a pastoral poem that involves time travel. “U. S. Rivers: Route 66” again takes readers onto the open road. The collection concludes with sheet music for two songs, “On the balcony, the moon” and “Ballad of Mattie.” Beckett has clearly done his research in order to provide details that capture the spirit of the United States and of major figures who made their mark on the country. He endeavors to use historically accurate diction, from full Spanish sentences in “Old California” to African American Vernacular English in “John Henry,” and his descriptions are often powerful, as in a line that paints Paul Bunyan as “A man mountain, all hustle, all muscle and bull bones” or a passage from the perspective of a deceased Amelia Earhart: “as the fish knock / my ribs, and coral grows on my white bones, / unsleeping, in the lurid current, clouds / foam, in seaweed.” But at more than 750 pages, this tome sorely needed pruning, as its excessive length will dissuade even the most ambitious readers from attempting to conquer it.
An often vivid but overlong set of works about America’s idols.Pub Date: April 15, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-947041-71-4
Page Count: 770
Publisher: Running Wild Press
Review Posted Online: June 23, 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
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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