Judith’s Reviews

Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems by Billy Collins I was given a copy of these poems by Billy Collins, Sailing Alone Around the Room, recently, and they are a delightful companion. As such they cannot rightly ever be stowed in the already read file because I will return as often as my soul needs to. I highly recommend a copy by everyone’s bedside. How can you not love a book of poems in which one can find these two stanzas in a poem called Forgetfulness? The name of the author is the first to go followed… Read More »Poetry

Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy SchiffMy rating: 5 of 5 stars “How would you like to be the wickedest woman in history?” This, Schiff tells us, is what Cecil B. DeMille asked Claudette Colbert when offering her the movie role of Cleopatra. It’s an indication that with the Egyptian queen, “In the match between the lady and the legend there is no contest.” Cleopatra’s story was told first by her vanquishers and later by men wildly incapable of facing the reality of a smart, immensely powerful woman. Stacy Schiff, in her superb biography of Cleopatra, does her best to repair… Read More »Cleopatra: A Life, Stacy Schiff

In the category of guilty pleasures, I happily place mysteries set in interesting historical settings. I recently picked up The Tomb of Zeus (2007), the first of Barbara Cleverly’s series set in Europe after World War I, featuring Laetitia Talbot, an independent young woman of means with a penchant for archaeology and mysteries. If you enjoy the conventions of the upper class British mystery and archaeological digs, you’ll have fun with this one. For the sake of suspense, Cleverly sometimes holds back information in ways that push credulity a bit, given that some of the key pieces were always in… Read More »Review of Tomb of Zeus

Isabel Allende’s latest novel, Island Beneath the Sea (April 2010), brings us into the 18th century world of slavery and revolution in Saint Domingue, Cuba and New Orleans. It follows the life of Zarité, a nine year old slave girl sold to Toulouse Valmorain, a French plantation owner in Saint Domingue (later Haiti). Allende’s richly drawn world envelops the reader, but even more compelling are the narrative voices telling this complex, interwoven story. The novel shifts between chapters told by Zarité herself in first person and an omniscient voice, which manages to express an ironic distain for the deficiencies and… Read More »Review of Island Beneath the Sea