Saturday, December 5, 2009

Labor Day

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Labor Day, a novel by Joyce Maynard (William Morrow/HarperCollins: New York, 2009).

There seemed to be a couple of very tiny continuity goofs here: a maternal grandmother dies when the boy is old enough to remember, leaving his mother an orphan (49-50), then had died "so long before," when he was at least too young to remember (146); a man is shirtless (151), then wearing a shirt (154).

I don't know why I get so distracted by such tiny details, but they pull me right out of the story. (This reminded me of a 12/02/2009 Publishers Weekly blog post by Elizabeth Bluemle, in which she said that reading the acknowledgments page(s) in a novel kick her "right out of the world of the story and its magic.") It's so difficult to maintain a reader's suspension of disbelief.

But beyond that, I ended up putting aside the other books I was reading after the first two pages of this one.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Poetry by Sandra Beasley

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"Unit of Measure" by Sandra Beasley (poem from Poetry, July/August 2009; reprinted at Poetry Daily on July 7, 2009)