“The second I finished reading Earthquake, without even thinking, I began reading it again. The prose has a lovely tidal pull. It's lyrical, vivid, stark, beautifully contained, dark, unblinking, and lulling. A pure and durable stream of coming-of-age vignettes. Earthquake is lush yet gritty, wondrously detailed yet written so cleanly. The book is a gem, and I use the term gem almost literally. The prose seems to have found its ideal voice, like a diamond formed at great depths in the earth, under intense pressure, and is fully alive, a sparkling artifact of compressed energy.”—Amy Gerstler
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Three bright, punchy snapshots from poet and painter Barnes, first published in a limited edition in 1990, track a family's unconventional approach to divorce. The opening, The Boat, finds the intact family in Alaska, where the young, female narrator lives with her veterinarian father; her dark, elusive mother; and her three sisters. The unnamed girl finds escape and contentment on a leaky boat out on the nearby river, leading to conflict with her protective father. In Earthquake, the parents get a divorce, dividing the four girls up by ages. The narrator and her older sister, Linda, are sent to live with their father and grandparents in Waltham, Mass.—with predictable new-kid results. Calling Home records the later years in the eclipse of the narrator's liberty, signified by restrictions put on the girls as they attempt to skip school, join a church and explore the countryside around their house. What makes it work, beautifully, is Barnes's simple declarative style: He cleaned up my hand in the kitchen sink. He didn't say anything. In these arresting vignettes, Barnes vividly portrays a youthful yearning for freedom. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
About the Author
Susan Barnes spent her childhood in Alaska and Massachusetts. After years of traveling with her children, Kate and Ezra, she received her MFA in Painting from SUNY, Buffalo. She taught for several years at Cooper Union before moving to Pouch Cove, Newfoundland. She now lives and works in Biddeford, Maine.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great quick read,
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This review is from: Earthquake (Paperback)
You feel like you are looking at film clips of Susan's life growing up. She is able to create vivid imagery with her words. There is an innocence which is permeated by a wry sense of humor as she recounts moments from her life growing up. The only fault is that it is too short!
3.0 out of 5 stars
Poetic but not necessarily literary,
By JustinWrites "book-y" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Earthquake (Paperback)
Poet Simon Pettet, on the back cover, called this slim book, "A delightful coming-of-age memoir in which childhood's unflinching, candid appraisal creates hallucinogenic calm." An interesting observation, and one I can agree with up to a point -- I think the prose is dreamlike and a bit untethered to reality, and there is a calmness to the overall tone of the book, but it don't believe it ever reaches those heights of transcendence and disembodiment that Pettet suggests. Instead, it's a string of anecdotes and real-life vignettes that are delivered by well-crafted, highly deliberate sentence structures, which evoke interest but not connectivity between reader and subject. Susan and her three sisters, enigmatic father and non-descript mother, who all live in Alaska during the 1950s, are composites of characters, not fully-realized, breathing people with lives off the page. Again, the writing is strong, the images evocative and stirring at times, but the book begs to be longer than it is, with less anecdotal ditties and more depth and breadth of life. A pleasant diversion, but not a book that stays with you for long.
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best book ever printed,
By
This review is from: Earthquake (Paperback)
This is a must-read from possibly the greatest unknown author of our time. Brilliant!
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