About a Book

Adam Giannelli has always been a fascinating writer to this reader. The author was one of my closest friends upon graduating from Oberlin in 2001, and our friendship reached its peak during our shared years living in Virginia getting our MFA's. It is a true pleasure watching him continue to shine as a poet, and I am totally bias in this review. Giannelli’s particular brand of friendship and communication is not always as verbally progressive as his poetry. It seems he saves some of his best lines for the page, evidenced in Tremulous Hinge . Gianelli starts off strong here, with a near mic drop of a poem, as “Stutter” addressed the author’s life long speech impediment, his verbal work-arounds to some more difficult words (“Since I couldn’t say Cleveland , I said Ohio ”) and his insecurity about his stutter. Kudos to Giannelli for embracing his stutter. I heard him read this in Boston several years ago, and he wisely read the poem first, so that all other stutters th

At age 50, Judah Leblang experimented with a series of assistive devices to find a hearing aid best suited to his hearing loss. The experience kicked him into an exploration of his Uncle Jerry’s life as a deaf man growing up in Ohio in the 30’s and 40’s. The two men shared both a physical disability and a place as the outsider: Jerry as the deaf athlete and disabled student at a high school attended by predominantly hearing students, Leblang as a gay man struggling with his sexuality, born some 20 years after his uncle. Echoes of Jerry is an even-paced narrative of Leblang’s early life in Ohio , his grappling with his sexuality in his twenties and thirties, his limited but impactful interactions with his uncle, his own experiences within the deaf community as a teacher, and his eventual work as a writer in Boston . While Leblang’s story is fleshed out here, Jerry’s is not as much, used instead as a spring board for Leblang to tell his own tale. This reader was eager t

The idea that what we learn in our childhoods, we carry into our adulthoods is not new, but Mindy Pollack-Fusi manages to infuse this truism with her own humor in her debut novel, The Narcissist’s Daughter . Jody Horowitz, the 31-year old main character is living a stable life with her husband and daughter outside of Boston when the book opens. Pollack-Fusi wisely sets her novel off with a bang when Jody discovers her husband in bed with another woman. From here, the stability of Jody’s life gives way. Through the course of this enjoyable page turner, Jody reveals the cracks in her marriage were there for a while, but the affair was the final impetus for it and Jody’s life to break. Raised by a controlling, disapproving mother, Jody needs to overcome her mother’s expectations and nasty demeanor. The reader sees Jody struggle to cast off the weight of what her mother expects and instead choose to be the person she and her own daughter can applaud. While Jody’s mother, th

Some books are enjoyable more for the tone than for the actual story: Steve Earle accomplishes this in his I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive. The premise of the book itself is a bit less endearing. The novel’s main character Doc Ebersole is a hack medic the reader is to believe may have given Hank Williams a dose of morphine for back problems that killed the legendary musician in 1953. Doc is tracked through his own intense drug addiction by Williams’ specter. Doc’s professional life involves providing illegal abortions to Mexican sex workers, as a means of making the money to feed his addiction. The world Doc inhabits is dark, yet he handles his work with care and concern. Earle wisely introduces an assistant, Graciela, who is at first one of Doc’s clients. She provides healing to Doc and his clients that is other-worldy and magical, and gives Doc something to believe in beyond his drugs. Earle’s history as a songwriter did him many favors here. The pages drip with