short reviews of underrepresented contemporary literature

Created by Denise Newman and Sarah Rosenthal, Joined at the Book brings meaning to reviewers, meaning to the authors whose books they review, and meaning to the larger community who read the reviews. This collection of diverse perspectives contributes to a robust larger conversation about the state of reality and what’s possible.

patty the instigator

This project was inspired by Sarah’s mother, Patricia Starnes Murray Rosenthal (July 13, 1930 – April 13, 2017), who at age 87 began, at Sarah’s instigation, to write reviews of poetry books. Sarah published each review on Facebook with a photo of Patty reading the book she’d reviewed. Patty completed short reviews of Douglas Kearney’s Mess And Mess And, Laura Walker’s Story, Jennifer Firestone’s Swimming Pool, and Denise’s Future People; she was working on a review of Don Mee Choi’s Hardly War at the time of her death. The process brought meaning to an elder who was more and more frail and isolated. For the authors, it was a unique critical perspective that seemed to connect directly to the original creative impulse in the work.

Patty’s Reviews

Future People by Denise Newman

Patty initially struggled to connect with this book; then this happened:

We are not separate from the world we inhabit, so when we try to describe something in our world we are not in control.

Almost every word and certainly any group of two or more words can refer to almost anything. An example is "put and but", then add the words that sound the same "but" are spelled differently, like your butt is part of your anatomy. "Butt" is also a verb meaning "to push suddenly."

If you try to count using only two items then there is no first or second.

Regarding "future," what you do next is your decision.

Also you can't count on the other person's understanding the same word to mean the same thing. Say "cat" for example and each person imagines a different cat. If you say "I am slow" for example, slow in comparison to what?

Mess and Mess and by Douglas Kearney

Patty was immediately riveted. She boiled down her take on it to two sentences:

Douglas Kearney's book is about the impossibility of slavery: one soul cannot own another. In fact one soul cannot ignore or dismiss another in any way.

Swimming Pool by Jennifer Firestone

Patty put her finger on the way a text can enact meaning through an intimate relationship between form and content:

Her style is very fluid like water. The way she describes the water in the pool and the motions of the swimmers and the complexity of their meetings and partings and so forth is extremely fluid. It's as though she thought that the water and these words were two aspects of the same element.

Also, I'm surprised at the number of famous literary works she's found where the style of the author has that same fluid quality. The Scarlet Letter, etc. She's obviously studied these.

Story by Laura Walker

Walker’s text elicited an intense response:

She seems to have a whole vocabulary of images that recur, but I don't think she gets depressed about it. I have that too—everything I ever thought or remember or experienced just comes flying out and I really find it disturbing. That's why I have a catalog of catalogs I recite, like flowers (Black-eyed Susans, daisies, members of the onion family...) and romantic relationships (Eloise & Abelard, Odysseus & Penelope...), to keep my mind calm.