At twenty-seven, Jake Lamar was a paragon of society — an upstanding young black male. He had been reared in a middle-class family in the Bronx, attended parochial and private schools, gone to Harvard, and was now an associate editor at Time magazine. His memoir is an exegesis of his growing discomfort with his place…
I first read this tremendous book in 1961, when it was published, and recently read it again after an interval of twenty-six years. Both times it has struck me as the best novel I know on the subject of writing, or on the condition of being a writer: and that alone seems marvelous because so…
Bardo Poems by Suzanne Paola. Univ. of Wisconsin Press, $10.95 paper. Reviewed by Susan Conley. In Tibetan, the bardo is defined as a transitory state after death, a murky time where, Suzanne Paola writes in her latest book of poems, “the soul wanders through the heavens and hells . . . trying to achieve…
Mary Gordon recommends Break Every Rule, essays by Carole Maso: “An original and compelling exploration of narrative strategies.” (Counterpoint)
Coconuts for the Saint A novel by Debra Spark. Faber and Faber, $22.95 cloth. Reviewed by Ann Harleman. Bright, wistful, and brash, Debra Spark’s first novel, Coconuts for the Saint, snares the reader instantly. On the surface it is a mystery story: Who is Sandrofo Cordero Lucero, and what is he hiding? Beneath lies another…
Madeline DeFrees recommends Beethoven and the Birds, poems by Judith Skillman: “Forty-five poems from the author whose first collection, Worship of the Visible Spectrum, won the King County Arts Commission’s Book Award in 1988. The poems celebrate the author’s return to playing the violin after a lapse of nine years. Images drawn from music and…
Breathe Something Nice Stories by Emily Hammond. Univ. of Nevada, $13.00 paper. Reviewed by Fred Leebron. There are no quiet stories in Breathe Something Nice, Emily Hammond’s first collection of fiction. In a series of ambitious evocations, Hammond demonstrates fresh wit and a fine irony. Most remarkable, though, is her willingness to keep opening up…
M. L. Rosenthal recommends Complete Poems, a collection by Kenneth Fearing (National Poetry Foundation): “It’s a special joy to have the work of this wry, sardonic, thoroughly alive Catullus of the American Depression once more in print. (Edward Dahlberg compared him with Corbière-and that was true, too.)”
Philip Levine recommends Believers, stories and a novella by Charles Baxter: “This is a superb collection; the stories are unusually daring and imaginative-‘Time Exposure’ and ‘The Lures for Love’ are two not to be forgotten. The novella ‘Believers’ demonstrates an extraordinary ability to deal with and invoke a past era and to show how sex,…
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