BRUTE NEIGHBORS
More than 50 local writers contributed work on the theme of urban nature for this anthology, edited by poet Chris Green and DePaul University environmental science prof Liam Heneghan. Of the dozens of poems included, a mere two—Stuart Dybek’s “Ravenswood” and “Beggar Girl” by Billy Lombardo—mention pigeons. C’mon, poets! You’re giving short shrift to the archetypal urban bird.
David A. Ansell
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In 1978, David Ansell and four fellow med-school grads loaded a U-Haul with their belongings and drove from Syracuse, New York, to Chicago—more specifically, to Cook County Hospital. At a time when many other medical centers still refused to admit black patients, County was—like home in Robert Frost’s “The Death of the Hired Man”—the “place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”
The book is full of sentence fragments and prose worthy of a mass-market romance novel (“Power emanated from her like Chanel No.5”). But none of that detracts from the man’s rock-solid cred. —Kate Schmidt
Gene Wolfe’s sparse new novel, Home Fires, is set in a near-future North America that—some geopolitical reorganization aside—looks surprisingly similar to ours. The book doesn’t even get its first confirmed cyborg sighting until well into the second half. Most of the plot transpires on a luxury cruise ship, where Chelle Sea Blue and her mate, a criminal lawyer named Skip Grison, get reacquainted after Chelle’s return from military service on another planet. A yearlong deployment for her equates to two decades for earthbound Skip, and Wolfe weaves a melancholy love story through the action sequences: Skip has to grapple with the insecurities of being a younger woman’s older man, while impulsive Chelle gets caught up in the physical and emotional traumas that result from interplanetary battle.
Thu 4/21, 7 PM, Book Cellar, 4736 N. Lincoln, 773-293-2665, bookcellarinc.com. F
Fri 4/29, 6:30 PM, Book Stall at Chestnut Court, 811 Elm, Winnetka, 847-446-8880, bookstall.com. F
