Synopses & Reviews
Shore, whose previous book,
Music Minus One, was a finalist for the National Book Award, here reflects on incidents and domestic tableaux concerning the desperate, comical, elusive, simple, or complicated kinds of happiness indigenous to her 1950s New Jersey neighborhood. At once universal and personal, Shore's poems are uncanny autobiographical duets for past and present, childhood and adulthood, daughter and mother. Like an album of black-and-white photos come to life,
Happy Family offers an honest poetry that dignifies memory through detail.
Review
"Her language attains a transparency that marks her gift for being objective and heartfelt at the same time." --
Jonathan Aaron, The Boston Sunday Globe"A spirited collection of poetic works." --Forecast
"With Happy Family, Shore proves that language, planets and our memories of the dead persist despite time's changing understandings and interpretations."--Seven Days
"Flawless texture.... Shore discovers wisdom in the circumstance of daily life, in the gentle impact of emotional weight." --The Potomac Reader
"Rich with metaphors and memories." --New York Jewish Week
About the Author
JANE SHORE is the author of three previous volumes of poetry: Music Minus One, a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist; The Minute Hand, which won the Lamont Poetry Selection of the American Academy of Poets; and Eye Level, winner of the Juniper Prize. She has received numerous grants and awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship. She lives in Washington, D.C., and Vermont with her husband, the novelist Howard Norman, and their daughter, Emma.