Customer Reviews

The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea: Poetry

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I loved The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time-- truly a wonderful, moving, and powerful novel. I also love poetry, so I was psyched to check out this book. Unfortuantely, I was deeply disappointed. The poems aren't especially bad, just not very good. They kind of meander along without saying too much that's very interesting and without offering any particular finesse with language. A couple are slightly smarmy self-referential poems about poetry and poets, which is usually not a good sign from a first book of poems. There were some occasional pleasures. I really liked this one called New Year's Day: "I walk on powdered/shell for three miles/to the spur's blunt head/where, each year,/something of the ocean/slows and falls/and turns into a yard of land,/and something of the emptiness/we spin through/silts and settles/so that we can walk/a little further/out into the fog." Not bad, but that's about as good as it gets, and there aren't many like that. It's really not bad, just kind of mediocre, which is disappointing after the remarkable job he did with his novel. If you're interested, I think the best thing to do is go to a bookstore and read a few of the poems before you buy.

I bought this book because I loved his novel and because I love poetry. I was not dissappointed. The book is lovely to look at for starters. The poems made me smile and think, rather than wonder what the poet meant.

I fell in love with this author's book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, but this was disappointing. Haddon should stick with writing novels. It was good for him to try a different writing style, but his naturl talent lies in setting up an entire plotline and placing himself in characters' mindsets.