From Publishers Weekly
Jacobsen-an octogenarian former poetry consultant to the Library of Congress (before the post was re-christened National Poet Laureate)-has also made significant contributions to the art of fiction-writing. These 30 short stories, all previously published, are small, highly polished gems often set in exotic locales like the Caribbean, Morocco or Guatemala. "The Inner Path" concerns an American journalist who loses his way on a country path in the Central American highlands and experiences a shocking encounter that will have long-term consequences. The untraditional family unit of "The Mango Community" is threatened by the political instability on the Caribbean island they've chosen to live on for a year. Because Jacobsen writes with a poet's sensibility, she's less concerned with the polemical contours of political facts than with the effects, great and small, those facts have on individuals. Other stories benefit from an appealingly comic tone. In "Nel Bagno," a woman about to go on vacation gets hopelessly trapped in her bathroom and discovers a wealth of gallows humor she didn't realize she had. Jacobsen's language is clear and filled with vivid images and quiet rhythms: a European in Morocco "looked as though he had had his blood painlessly extracted and then been sealed again"; as a hysterical housewife drives away from her home, "the trees parted, parted, parted before her and in a soft cloud on either side rose the dust." Although many of the stories have lullingly similar shapes, the characters are sharply realized and the situations they find themselves in are startling and evocative.
Copyright 1996 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Perhaps best known for her poetry (e.g., In the Crevice of Time: New and Collected Poems, Johns Hopkins, 1995), Jacobsen has accomplished in this wonderful collection what Tobias Woolf once said he likes about short stories: "the power, the directness, the unity of impression, the ability they have to conjure up whole worlds in a few pages." These stories are reflective rather than brimming with action, but in each the reader becomes enmeshed in details of other people's lives: the Atlantic City girl who watches her mother's German friend disappear during World War II; an old man who suffers three strokes in "The Company" and sees his world shrink to a bedroom full of memories; a cricket-playing child who suffers permanent injury in "The Mango Community." Throughout, Jacobsen imparts a sense of both mystery and continuity to her characters. Eight of these stories were included in the O. Henry Prize Stories series; all 30 of them will strike the reader in some way. This book will be savored and remembered. Recommended for all short story collections.?Doris Lynch, Monroe Cty. P.L., Bloomington, Ind.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
