Adventures in Reading

Readers may be interested in the following books which have been added to stock at Galway City Library:

The Collected Poems, By Stanley Kunitz: Norton & Co.
Kunitz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet of far-ranging style and influence, died last year aged 100. Over the years he learned to "strip the water out of my poems" and acknowledge the benefits of a simpler, more intense approach. "A poet cannot concern himself with being fair to the reader. Time will tell. All poems contain a degree of mystery, as poetry is a discovery of one's hidden self. . . . Poetry is not concerned with communication; it has roots in magic, incantation, and spell-casting."

Lies, by Enrique De Heriz: Random House
After a boating accident in a Guatemalan backwater, Isabel, a Spanish anthropologist finds that one of the victims has been misidentified as her. She is strangely reluctant to return to her grieving children and husband in Barcelona. This is a powerful, original and beautifully written book , which explores the substance of what we are. The vivid, deadpan pacing of this novel recalls the films of Pedro Almodóvar.


Silence in October, by Jens Christian Grondhal : Harcourt
Story of an art historian whose wife, Astrid, has inexplicably departed. Why did she leave? Will she return? These are the questions her husband ponders as he tracks her progress through Europe (via credit card use and bank withdrawals) to a place in Portugal that has special meaning for them. This is indeed an "October" novel, meditative and melancholic: a lucid and lyrical book from a gifted writer.