After living here almost three years, I decided that it was time to reclaim the ornamental beds. As I dug out native tree saplings, well-rooted blackberry vines, mountains of oregano that had gone wild and some unappreciated shrubbery, I was not alone, thanks to the faithful companionship of Augie. He stayed right with me, tucked under the shrubs, unless he happened on a tennis ball or right-handed (never, ever a left one) garden glove that just begged to be buried in the freshly turned soil.
How can you complain about hard work when you’ve got good company?
Dickinson in Her Own Times provides a fascinating, unique perspective into the life and work of Emily Dickinson. This book is a compilation of personal letters, interviews, and memoirs by those who knew Dickinson and her work including her family, friends and acquaintances, and her reviewers. These sources provide an almost eyewitness account of the transformation of Dickinson as the brilliant eccentric who broke poetic convention to her status as an almost mythic, literary legend. Beautifully organized, this book begins with documents elucidating Dickinson’s life from girlhood.
When the young daughter of Anna Pigeon’s friend, Heath, becomes the target of a vicious cyber stalker bent on destroying the young girl’s life, all three escape to Boar Island off of the Maine coast, where Anna fills in for an absent chief park ranger. Not long after they arrive, however, they realize the stalker has followed them. At the same time, Anna accidentally becomes the target of an exceedingly disturbed ranger named Denise, who murders the abusive husband of her newly discovered twin.
The Summer Guest is a beautiful novel which interweaves the stories of three women. In the summer of 1888, Zinaida Lintvaryova, a young doctor recently blinded by a terminal illness, begins a journal which records her new friendship with a summer guest on her family’s property in the Ukraine–Anton Chekhov. In London in 2014, Katya, a young Russian immigrant, places great hope in the publication of Zinaida’s journal as she struggles with mysterious marital difficulties and the impending failure of her publishing business. Finally a translator in a small French village becomes enthralled by the possibility of an undiscovered novel by Chekhov that she might translate.
Desiree Alvarez is a poet who imbues reality with the mythic and mystical to create striking imagery. Alvarez, who created the cover art for Devil’s Paintbrush with a flamethrower, is also an artist, which may partly explain her strong visual images. For example in Yours, In Snow, she writes, “Your eyes, smoked blue, are full of mountains / and something beyond that keep me.” In Chorus of Snow Quartz, “Lichen glows as if a place could be a lover.” In Indian Elephant, the speaker slips out at night to “watch the pearls of gulls string the abandoned pier.” In Familiar where the speaker mourns her dog, “the wind blew a hole right through me in the shape of a dog running on my first night without you.” Given the beauty of her words, it comes as no surprise that Alvarez has won numerous awards, fellowships and residences, including the 2015 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize for Devil’s Paintbrush. For those who seek a haunting line, Devil’s Paintbrush provides ample material to savor.
In Charlotte Bronte: A Fiery Heart, Claire Harman tackles the life of one of the most famous women writers in British history. In just under four-hundred pages, Harman relates Bronte’s life from birth until her untimely death from what Harman believes was hyperemesis gravidarum resulting from a pregnancy during her brief, but happy marriage to Arthur Nicholls. Along the way, Harman details Bronte’s isolated childhood, her difficult years as a teacher and governess, her yearning to return to her family, her unrequited passion for two men, her and her sisters’ struggles to become published, the death of her siblings, and the celebrity her work eventually engendered. Through this biography, Harman establishes Bronte as a surprisingly strong, at times difficult, but passionate woman who relied deeply on her own experiences to create her work. As a result of Bronte’s close ties to her sisters, Harman also provides interesting insights into Emily and Anne Bronte’s lives. For those intrigued by the woman behind Jane Eyre and Villette, this meticulously researched and detailed biography is sure to please.