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cec_loves_to_read_books's review
challenging
emotional
sad
slow-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent
hannahmayreads's review
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
3.0
This was an odd reading experience - the prose is oddly lyrical and relaxed, languid almost, which only serves to intensify the meaning of it. Holland-Batt elegantly wrestles with a grief that begins before death.
archytas's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
4.25
Holland-Batt brings confidence and cutting clarity to the poetry here. Poetry often explores the poet's own vulnerabilities, but here Holland-Batt takes her pen to chronicling the impossibility of grief and loss of a parent. The first section deals explictly with decline. The lines crackle with humour, anger and a kind of wryness vyes with the strong emotion.
Holland-Batt well captures the complexity of family. Her father can be infuriating: The Jaguar of the title works across themes, but it most obviously represents a car her father buys the day after he is told to stop driving, a hopelessly obstinate decision which gives him pleasure, even in the anger it provokes. But she also shows us the intellectually generous man who raised her to question and to think.
The second section covers her travels, and can be almost hedonistic in its celebrations of a good drink in a hotel, the feeling of a sunrise in a new place. But we never feel disconnected from the reality of her loss - life and loss, voracity and helplessness. It was an unexpected pleasure to read.
Holland-Batt well captures the complexity of family. Her father can be infuriating: The Jaguar of the title works across themes, but it most obviously represents a car her father buys the day after he is told to stop driving, a hopelessly obstinate decision which gives him pleasure, even in the anger it provokes. But she also shows us the intellectually generous man who raised her to question and to think.
The second section covers her travels, and can be almost hedonistic in its celebrations of a good drink in a hotel, the feeling of a sunrise in a new place. But we never feel disconnected from the reality of her loss - life and loss, voracity and helplessness. It was an unexpected pleasure to read.