Devadatta’s Poems is a delightful book of poetry full of the kind of mischievous fun that comes with exploring a fallen character: an anti-hero already relegated, historically, to obscurity. Beveridge’s Devadatta is as compelling as he is repellant and his voice is one that will amuse, enlighten, and enrich readers.
Category: Book Reviews
Book Reviews
A review of How to be Another by Susan Lewis
The narrative in this collection exists in that there is no narrative; we find ourselves instead in the pairing of clashing words that, like a musical score, creates not an arch, but rather the opening of a flower. Each prose poem is handled with delicate care, and yet, Lewis is able to formulate each in a sense of divine carelessness. She redesigns familiar clichés into new architecture, allowing a close proximity to the reader throughout each section.
A review of The Life of Houses by Lisa Gorton
Though the book reads quickly, it’s denser than it feels. As a reader, I felt it was necessary to slow down my reading so I could notice all the descriptive detail and the power in each word in The Life of Houses, allowing the story to unfold at its own rhythm and get fully under the skin. This is an utterly beautiful and somewhat sad story that grows in power with re-reading as it strikes at the heart of human relationships, families, self-perception, and how we make meaning in our lives.
A review of Nobody Move by Denis Johnson
Some of it has an edge – to be absolutely just – but I think even Johnson himself lost interest in it, characters and story, the whole shebang, way before the close. The novel sputters to an end.
A review of Confidentially Yours by Charles Williams
You could say, tongue in cheek, that it is the diverting story of how a man loses one wife and finds another. There are lots of twists and turns to the story, the characters are well-defined (if anything, they behave a little too straightforwardly – no melancholy moping as in some novels I’ve read recently) and Williams’s prose is plenty good enough.
A review of Mendeleev’s Mandala by Jessica Goodfellow
But Goodfellow’s book is not chock-full of despair. There is a welcomed humor that shines through the poems, because of her ability to play with words. This is present even in a poem as serious as the above mentioned, where Goodfellow lists avoidable words, “blind date, love at first sight, second sight, stars in your eyes, only have eyes for you, blind love, blind devotion, sight for sore eyes, see-through blouse, easy on the eyes, roving eye, eye candy, bedroom eyes” (42).
A review of brush by Joanne Burns
At times, the poems are so full of parataxis, clever juxtaposition, ironic aside and syntactical juggling, that the poems, taken too quickly or in too large a dose can create a kind of vertigo. However, I couldn’t leave the book alone. It kept drawing me back, one poem at a time, and each time I returned I found something new; something powerful.
A review of Beasts by John Crowley
One can detect a definite indebtedness to T.H. WhIte (The Once and Future King, The Goshawk) in Crowley’s early novel (1976 was the original year of publication) but it’s an entertaining read and full of memorable characters. Indeed, I didn’t think I would ever find myself feeling for or empathising with a dog called Sweets, but that’s just what happened here.
A review of You Have No Power Over Me by Mark Logie
You Have No Power Over Me is a rather scary little story about a Daniel, a young boy alone in the park, and Lark, an older man who lives on what he can steal. Both Daniel and Lark are misfits – society’s cast-offs and both seem to be living a lonely, tenuous and dangerous existence when Lark finds Daniel.
A review of Carolina Skeletons by David Stout
Besides being a very fine mystery, Stout’s novel is as well a provocative meditation on contemporary history. He reminds us that the primary source for the recent past lies in the memories of the living. Such memories, fragile as they are, may indeed be the only resource, if you want to challenge the written record.