Word: sparely
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Childhood sexual abuse is a beast in many of these books. In Richard Hoffman's spare, poignant Half the House (Harcourt Brace; 175 pages; $20), it sneaks in almost laconically after the author has given us a searing picture of his blue-collar family in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in the 1950s, with a violent but caring father and two brothers who are terminally ill. Hazy reverence for the Catholic saints is counterpointed with hazy submission to the sadistic coach who lures the author, then age 10, to his house with pornography and sodomizes him: "Induced, premature, with a hunger urgent...
Finally, after the situation persisted through the summer, Harvard Real Estate, in conjuction with several homelessness empowerment groups (including Spare Change, Bread and Jams, and Solutions for Work) decided to erect the cage over the grates on Holyoke...
...book is not a landmark like Cat's Eye or The Robber Bride. Nevertheless, Morning in the Burned House is solid and thoughtful, an inventive re-working of familiar Atwood themes. It also accomplishes what has become increasingly difficult in an age of obscure poetry: In a spare, often stacatto language, Atwood themes. It also accomplishes what has become increasingly difficult in an age of obscure poetry: In a spare, often stacatto language. Atwood resurrects the simple beauty of the poetic form...
Books like this usually conclude on a note of hard-won triumph. But perhaps the most appealing thing about this spare, beautifully etched memoir is that after 40 years of thriving and surviving in New York City, Cantwell admits to no greater wisdom than she had when she first arrived. More comfortable as observer than confessor, she ends where she began--in another Village apartment. This one looks out on a brick-walled garden, and before going to sleep, she opens her bedroom window to get that old charge: the sound of Manhattan "buzzing...
...campaign pollsters have inundated Powell's inner circle of friends with professional entreaties. And G.O.P. presidential hopeful Pete Wilson made a secret pilgrimage to Powell's Virginia mansion on Sept. 6 to have coffee with him, even after Wilson was told Powell had only half an hour to spare and would not answer the central question: Will he run? His deadline for that decision appears to be Thanksgiving, and he is leaning toward running as a Republican. In that scenario, the TIME/CNN poll showed that Powell would trounce Clinton...