From Publishers Weekly
Hadas, a poet (Living in Time) and professor of English at Rutgers University, has collected here a number of prose pieces (some previously published) written both before and after 1992, the year her mother died of cancer and Charles Barber, a close friend, died of AIDS. The selections written before those tragic events deal with a variety of subjects, including the search for a school in Manhattan for her son and a meeting with her mother that Hadas now views as an omen. In the later pieces, Hadas ruminates on her relationship with the two deceased, the continuing impact of her loss and the different forms mourning can take. She intersperses her recollections with references from literature to illuminate her thoughts, but the large amount of quoted material sometimes overwhelms her own reflections. Hadas also delivers a somewhat churlish critique of the language in the bereavement notes she received after her mother's death.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In the spring of 1992, poet Hadas (The Empty Bed, LJ 4/15/95) lost her mother to cancer. Six weeks later a close friend died of AIDS. In this collection of essays, the author expresses her great sense of loss at the two deaths that have altered her world forever. Most of the pieces included here deal with the large themes of happiness, love, time, and death. An exception is one selection called "Visiting Schools," about choosing a school for her son in Manhattan, which seems oddly out of place. The essays are intelligent, well written, and moving, yet Hadas's academic background and heavy-handed quoting of poets from Homer to John Ashbery often renders her language erudite and inaccessible. This work will appeal to those familiar with the author's work, and it may be of help to individuals coping with their own bereavement, but it will put off the general reader.?Caroline Mitchell, Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
