1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Should come with a health warning, July 31, 2011
This review is from: Shoulder Season (Paperback)
Mlinko writes prose like - has no-one said this before? - OK, like an angel; there, I said it. But as poet? This is the kind of book that you either feel really proud of yourself for reading or you want to hurl across the room. Mlinko's charm is unmistakable, yet this exhibits the kind of preciousness at which Europeans (and no doubt more sophisticated Americans) can only stare aghast, like seeing someone coming out of the loo with their skirt caught in their knickers. Example: 'cats enceinte in hyacinth' - does this mean they are pregnant, in which case the adjective, while inarguably feminine, should equally inarguably be plural, or that they are cinctured in hyacinth, which would be neater, besides sounding echt Mlinko and getting one out of the adjective conundrum (the number still being wrong and the information about gender irrelevant, except to the cats' owner)
OK, French is a minefield - but getting closer to home, you guys really ought to learn how to spell Caribbean!
I haven't given up on Mlinko - her radiant/dense, playful/civilised qualities are cherishable - but will this be one of those books that, in Dr Johnson's words, 'the reader admires and puts down, and forgets to take up again'?
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