"Someone else's name" by Joseph Harrison (Zoo Press, 2003)

Poems from Antioch Review, Paris Review, Kenyon Review, etc., with an introduction by Hecht. Its three sections have promising titles - "Songs and Sonnets", "Stories", "Signs and Figures". Reading the introduction makes me realise that I'm likely to miss many allusions - to Frost, Shakespeare, etc. All the same I don't think I've missed much in "Sunshine and Rain", which lists contrasting pairs (e.g. Lear's wisdom and folly) ending with the more puzzling line "As words from long ago fill up this line". "Air Larry" is gently humourous I suppose.

The following has more to it -

And now the world's a blank page, frozen hard    As disbelief, extreme As absence, blanketing the small back yard    In flash and fitful gleam, Concealing the cold earth we worked and scarred    Till harvest comes to seem A distant pageant in which we humans starred    Only in some dim dream (p.15)

"Dante Lost" is fun. I found "View of Baltimore from Green Mount Cemetery" (7 pages) tedious. "Peregrine Falcon on Skyscraper" is 3 pages of short lines (axxa rhyming stanzas: e.g. "All all the time/ A feathered acrobat/ Who's utterly at ease/ With the sublime")- a pleasant, informative read.

Here are some of the more prosaic lines from the sonnet sequence, "As if"

I'd love you, lady, at a lower rate If that would help. I'd take it to extremes. Send flowers daily, then send chocolate, And book us flights to Paris, where we'd go Sauntering down the boulevards, and sip Expensive wines ... ... One scene with you is all I'd ask to play: I'd ham it up, I'd play it to the hilt And make it run forever and a day. ... My credits don't amount to a hill of beans. My canon is a stack of might-have-beens, Assembled, with long labour, bit by bit. A tree fell, but nobody noticed it. Attack a windmill and the windmill wins ... Know you are always in mind and heart Where we are both together and apart. When sunrise sweeps the sky from gray to blue Or, shedding clouds, the moon steps into view

Now for some random extracts -

• In every story we read our own stories, As if the times gave us, in daily pages, Untimely legends we're the fractals of (p.29)

• He loved fly-fishing, and wrote poetry, Shy serious pursuits, where patience leads To lucky spots of brief felicity. The trick's to make the lure look natural, ... Then as an image rises to take the bait Jerk the taut line (p.33)

• The sign/thing sine curve thing, like thing and sign Were thing and wave at once, a cursive sign Written on water by wind with fire from earth In the richest contradictions of connotation, Doing a triple back flip telling a joke On up through inside under over and out. (p.82)

"Walking the wall" by Ann Phillips (Poetry workshop publications, 2010)

Poems (nearly 100 pages of them!) from Dreamcatcher, Iota, Obsessed with pipework, etc.

She writes in a note that "Neither have I edited them for consistency, especially of punctuation". There's syntax that would be confusing even if commas were used. Extra spaces between words are used sometimes instead of a comma. Some sections are indented.

The first few poems have variety - one-idea poems; short-lined poems; poems that are nearly prose; poems hooked on rhyme. Though no single poem convinces me, I'm happy to read on.

p.11 is one of many pages without punctuation. Sometimes the line-breaks are commas, sometimes they're used merely to make all the lines roughly the same length. It begins with "Solid being a dance of atoms/ a wall is a maze of maybe/ self a metaphor/ not of our choosing" which I like. And I like the later "a shiver of meaning/ crosses our minds with silver". But do I like the poem? I'm not so sure.

In "Stairs", "the active young go scissoring up,/ come back by the banisters sledging:/ the old go slower as the stairs go faster - / time is the other dimension" - I only understand the 2nd line of that.

"Solstices" (which has no comma or full stops) starts with "Two the lily-white boys/ at the solstices they stand" which seems unhelpfully confusing even if you know the "Green Grow the Rushes, O" song. Why not add a comma after "boys"? Better still, why not "Two lily-white boys stand at the solstices"?

"It is shapesharer/ with the ginko leaf" (p.24) means "it has the same shape as the ginko leaf". But why bother deviating from standard language in this way? That's a question I often asked myself when reading this book.

"The marrow was picked from me, shin-bone/ and holes were drilled to make me tibia flute" (p.30) needed a re-read - I parsed it wrongly. Why add obstacles? Why not "The marrow was picked from me, a shin-bone. Holes were drilled to make me into a tibia flute" or "They scraped out my marrow. drilled holes, made me into a tibia flute."

"Ely" has less-contorted syntax and is easy to like. "Rules" gets better as it goes along and might be my favourite.

"The Betrayals" by Fiona Neill

An audio book, each chapter from a particular PoV.

Daisy's 21. Her boyfriend Kip is meeting her mother Rosy (a doctor specialising in Breast cancer) for the first time. Her father Nick (a memory specialist - he knews about false memories) walked out 7 years ago. She has a younger brother Max. Nick lives with Lisa (lawyer, now Yoga trainer), who used to be Daisy's best friend. Lisa has a daughter Eva, who was Daisy's friend, and Rex, who lives with his father Barry. Daisy intercepts a letter from Lisa to Rosy saying she has terminal breast cancer, and that she has something to tell Rosy. There's a key to Lisa's house in the envelope which gets lost before the envelope reaches Rosy. Rosie had an anxiety syndrome (or OCD) that made her do rituals to keep the ones she loved safe. She thinks she's having a relapse. She gets Kip to move in.

Max is a med student with a girlfriend Connie who's rather older than him.

Nick and Lisa are going to marry. They're going to tell their kids about the cancer after. Lisa's refusing chemo, preferring coffee enemas. She denies that she's contacted Lisa when Nick asks.

Rosy used sex to feel alive again after the break-up. She's active on Tinder. Someone she's having regular sex with, Ed, a few years younger than her, suddenly becomes part of her team at work. She hadn't known he was a doctor. She tries to dump him. He finds out her address, meets Kip and Daisy.

When Daisy was 12 the 2 families went on holiday. When she was on the beach nervously waiting for Rex to arrive and take her virginity she sees her father and Lisa have sex (though during Nick PoV section, he says they didn't get that far). Barry has serious drinking problems. Max fancies Eva. Daisy's obsession issues seem to worsen after that holiday. Max does all he can to help.

Back in the present, we learn that the note Daisy received that holiday saying to meet Rex on the beach was written by Max. Daisy had got into trouble at school because Eva had overdosed on a party drug that Daisy had brought to a gathering (she'd wanted to make peers like her). Max tells his father that Daisy's OCD started after Daisy saw him and Lisa having sex on the beach. Nick says it's a false memory - they were just friends at the time.

Instead of a hen-party, Lisa goes to a karmic, detox health weekend with Nick, who loses patience with the tutors. Rosy's using sex to get Ed out of her head. She swipes right before realising that the man is Barry. They meet all the same, for a chat. He'd considered a revenge shag with her. Now that he's stopped drinking he has a busy time with women. Lisa meets Rosy, apologising for the effect she's had on Daisy's health. She says that Nick has found a younger woman. Rosy invites Lisa onto her special chemo trial. She sleeps with Barry after all. Daisy meets Rex who tells her that he didn't send the note.

Nick discovers he's been sleeping with his son Max's girlfriend. From a distance Max watches Lisa strip and walk into the sea. A celebration swim?

Nick doesn't act/think like someone whose partner is rapidly dying. The Rosy+Barry and Max/Nick+Connie relationships at the end are unconvincing.

Other reviews

• jenmedsbookreviews
• damppebbles
• noveldelights (Max is infatuated by women who treat him badly. From Daisy, we see how her OCD controls her; from Max we find out about the guilt he has been carrying around since childhood; from Nick we discover how he uses life to justify his weaknesses; and from Rosie we see that she is unable to make new romantic attachments following being betrayed by the two people she trusted most. ... in parts I found it a tad disjointed with things left unclear. For me it was ambiguous in parts, especially the ending which really frustrated me. )
• handwrittengirl (‘The Betrayals’ was a difficult book to get into, filled with a complex and unlikable characters. Towards the end, I was almost looking forward to finishing it. ... The characters are complicated and self absorbed, all caught up in their own dramas and constantly seeking reassurance or forgiveness. At times, I found their neediness and drama irritating)
• Rebecca McCormick ( There are questions that are left unanswered when they shouldn't have been, and I felt like the last twenty percent of the book was a bit rushed and not entirely satisfying)

"Don't Let Go" by Harlan Coben

An audio book.

Sexy Daisy tricks older Dale Milton into driving her home from a bar while drunk - a set up. She's done it before. Rex, a cop, gets him to stop. Dale shoots and kills him.

Inspector Napoleon (Nap) Dumas is visited by police (Bates and Stacey Reynolds). He had a twin brother Leo (who he still often refers to as "you"). Leo and girlfriend Diana died together on a train line. Suicide? Murder? His parents (French father) are dead. He volunteers at a battered wives refuge (and attacks husbands who have behaved badly). 15 years before, he used to go out with Moira. When she disappeared he put her fingerprints on the database with instructions that he should be contacted if she found. Moira is Daisy, which why the police are visiting. Nap deduces that Dale was going through a divorce and had fallen into a trap that would damage his case. But the man in the car had a fake name. Perhaps he was a hit man paid to kill Rex?

He consults a schoolfriend. The dead people belonged to the "conspiracy club" - to do with a secret missile launching site nearby. The site didn't used to be secret - school trips were arranged to it - but security was increased when it became an "agriculture research centre" (when the missiles became nuclear?). 3 months after Leo/Diana's death it closed down. Other club members were Hank (brilliant but has mental problems - he's recently disappeared) and Beth (who's been out of contact for years. She's made an effort to hide her identity but they track her down).

Diana's father Oggy has guided Leo through his career. He's a police boss now. He says that on that final night he saw that Leo was high when he collected Diana.

A rumour on social media said that Hank flashed to schoolgirls. Nap tracks down the initiators and finds out it's not true - people wanted to get rid of a wierdo. Hank is found hung from a tree, castrated. He left a tape of that night.

Ellie, the boss of the wives refuge, tells him that she suspects he's been attacking husbands. He doesn't deny it. She tells him to stop.

Nap tracks down Andy Reeves, the boss of security of the old camp. He tells Reeves about the tape. Reeves assaults him, takes him to a warehouse to torture him. Moira saves Nap, killing Reeves. She takes him to the woods to relive the night. She says they were shot at. As she ran away she heard a scream. She reported nothing and has been on the run for 15 years. They go to her room and make love. Nap's still puzzled about why the murders are re-starting after 15 years. He doesn't believe that Hank killed himself. How did Moira escape from the professional hitman?

The FBI interview him with people (including a state prosecutor) around. Nap tells everyone what he thinks. An FBI agent starts to attack him. Nap knocks him out and escapes. He and Moira drive to see Beth. She says that Leo LSD'd Diana as a joke and took her to the wood. A prisoner escaped, and Diana got caught in the crossfire. Nap meets Oggy, already suspecting the truth. Oggy says he found Diana dead and killed Leo, faking their death. He was the hitman who killed Rex (he let Daisy go because she wasn't a witness to the original incident. He killed Hank. Nap stops Oggy killing Beth, him or himself. He realises that he might have caught his vigilanty tendencies from Oggy. He plans to live with Moira,

Fast paced. A good read. Some phrases attracted my attention -

• "Daisy wore a clingy black dress with a neckline so deep it could tutor philosophy" (parodying the hard-boiled style?)
• "the play button descends with an audible click" (but aren't all clicks audible?)
• "Hank's eyes dart about like scared birds trying to find a place to land" (from Nap's PoV - which explains why it's a cliche?)

Other reviews

• Kirkus reviews (What secret could the Conspiracy Club have discovered that would remain so dangerous for so long? Sadly, the answers are neither as interesting nor even as surprising as the setup. This may be the first time most of perennially bestselling Coben’s readers will beat his hard-used hero to the solution.)

"Some histories of the Sheffield flood 1864" by Rob Hindle (Templar Poetry, 2006)

A pamphlet of poems from Staple, etc, with adverts from the Sheffield Telegraph and Sheffield Times, 1864. The poems are about victims (there were over 250) and survivors - slices of life all presented in much the same voice though one's a 1st person PoV by a dead 14 year-old. I like the pamphlet - as much for the factual info as the poetry. A suicider was saved from the river and locked up over-night. When the water rose to his armpits he pleaded to be let out. He survived, but the Inspector who freed him caught typhus and died.

"Amicable numbers" by Mike Barlow (Templar poetry, 2008)

A pamphlet of poems from Dreamcatcher, Interpreter's House, Poetry Nottingham, The Rialto, Seam, Smiths Knoll and Staple. I've been in all those magazines. Many of them have long gone.

I like some of the lines - e.g. "You're a crowd of strangers at the crem" (p.23)

I like some of the poems - e.g. "The Long Loss" and "Driving home". "The house without memory" is an interesting experiment, based on "This is the house that Jack build". It uses rhyme.

There's a typo on p.9 - "An obedient hounds sleeps at our feet".

Other reviews

• Kirsten Irving (Barlow is concerned with the significance of intimate moments and quiet observations, from the blister on a palm left by a wedding ring to a phone call to a dented charm. This works well in the unspoken frustration of ‘A First Anniversary’ ... I don’t feel the observational style comes off quite as well in ‘The House Without Memory’.)
• D A Prince (It provides more nourishing reading than many full-length collections.)
• Tony Williams (the methods Barlow uses to explore this material are quiet, elliptical: he generally uses a slightly prosaic free verse, which needs the strong images he puts in to quicken things ... When things go wrong, when the sense of intimacy isn’t sufficiently realised, the poems can look slight (I didn’t like ‘Cauliflower Cheese’, for example); and sometimes (‘Shift’) I was left wondering whether a poem was slight or, rather, delicate ... My favourites here are the ones where Barlow allows more leeway to the strangeness of his imagination—‘Twins’, for example)

"Prague Spring" by Simon Mawer

An audio book.

It's 1968. Two Oxford students, Mark (1st year science, a Northerner) and Eleanor (2nd year English, more middle class), discuss the long vac in a noisy pub. They only know each other because they're in the cast of a play. She suggests that they hitch-hike around Europe just as friends. On the way to the coast they stay at her parents' in separate rooms. She tells him she still has occasional sex with her ex-fiance Kevin.

In Prague, embassy employee Sam (who's in a cooling relationship with pretty Stephanie, who's returning to London) flirts with Medalina who sleeps with Lenka who, he discovers after, was an East German honeypot spy when she was 15. Prague has experiencied a few months of relative freedom. The embassy staff speculate over what to do if Russia tries to suppress the Dubchek revolution.

Mark and Elli start hitch-hiking. She can speak French - he can't. After smoking pot they have sex, which means more to him than her. She confesses later that she can't let herself go during sex, perhaps because her mother had affairs. She'd hoped it would have been different with Mark - she likes and trusts him - but she still doesn't enjoy sex. They get picked up by a US band, "Ides of March". They meet a cellist who knows about Oxford and is soon to perform in Prague. They decide on a whim to head for Prague. To their surprise they get through the barrier - "a barber's pole, a jousting lance" - at the border with a minimum of fuss.

Sam meets Lenka's mother who tells him stories about the past - she was recently offered a medal and compensation for her rebellious husband's death. Lenka's mother has a partner who belongs to the party. Thanks to him she's a student (but she slept with him?) Sam and Lenka stumble upon a Russian army exercise. They pop to Munich and back, taking advantage of his diplomatic immunity. They pick up Mark and Ellie. Lenka gives them a tour of Prague and sorts out accomodation. The Moody Blues are in town. They see "Ides of March" in action (did Ellie share pot and have sex with them? Mark suspects so. Ellie says that what she does with her body is not his problem) and the cellist's concert. After the concert, 2 russian musicians want to defect. Sam lets them stay overnight in his flat.

The Russians invade. Sam is told to come to the embassy and not bring Lenka. Stephanie desperately tries to contact him. Elli and Mark get caught up in street action - they see Swastikas painted onto the tanks. Mark phones Sam, tells him that Lenka's been shot. A convoy's arranged out of the country - Elli, Mark and the musicians are in the same minibus. Sam rushes to the hospital. It's touch and go. Safe in Germany, Mark feels that he and Elli have recently only been together because of the situation. She says she liked Lienka and wonders if she's a lesbian. They decide where to go with the toss of a coin.

[It works for me, maybe because I'm interested in Prague. It didn't seem over-researched (the researched bits are sneaked in when czechs tell english people about their past). Videos of the Moody Blues from that time are on YouTube! Compromises, chance and fate are abiding themes. I imagine that Sam will marry Stephanie and that Eleanor will look back on the journey as a turning point. There are little glimpses of the future - e.g. at one point we're told that Mark will recall a kiss with a married woman for the rest of his life and she would later die in a New York car accident.]

Other reviews

• Roberta Silman (this consistently interesting novel adds a resonate dimension to an historical event about which we thought we knew all there was to know)
• Lisa Hill