The Poet's House (Compact Disc)
Staff Reviews
Here’s a quarter-life crisis for you: Carla is a landscaper in Northern California, and one day, she’s sent to do some planting for an almost-mythical poet named Viridian who lives in the woods with assorted hangers-on. Pulled into their orbit, the world of poetry is opened up for Carla, only with one problem – her ADHD makes it very difficult for her to read. As she untangles the stories of the poet’s lives, can she figure out what’s important about poetry and what is surface gloss? And while she’s at it, maybe she can find some legendary poems that have gone missing. Thompson is sometimes called a writer’s writer, which translates to great reviews but modest sales, and perhaps a bit of inaccessibility to the general reader. But in The Poet’s House, a book that’s literally about writing, Thompson has opened the door to all of us in a disarmingly entertaining novel that’s sure to be savored.
— Daniel Goldin
An unforgettable coming-of-age story that manages to be serious and thoughtful as well as lighthearted and humorous. 21-year old Carla is insecure, searching for meaning and something to feel passionately about. A reading disability held her back in school and, in her mind, limited her choices, so when she meets a famous poet while working as a landscaper and is invited into the insular world of poets and poetry she is, to say the least, surprised to find herself drawn to this world and finding an unexpected path for her own life.
— Kathy HerbstDescription
An unforgettable, lighthearted story about a young woman who discovers the insular world of writers, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Year We Left Home. Carla is in her twenties, working for a landscaper, lacking confidence, still unsure what direction her life will take. Viridian is a lauded and lovely aging poet whose reputation has been defined by her infamous affair with a famous male poet, Mathias, many years earlier. When Carla is hired to work at Viridian's house, she is perplexed by this community of writers: their tendency to recite lines in conversation, the stories of their many liaisons, their endless wine-soaked nights. And still she becomes enamored with Viridian and her whole circle, and especially with the power of words, the ache and hunger that can both be awakened and soothed by a poem, a hunger that Carla feels sharply at this stagnating moment in her young life. At the same time, she sees how even Viridian has had to compromise so much to take her place in the world of letters. And as Viridian's standing begins to fade, a number of people angle to gain possession of Mathias's cycle of poems written about Viridian, a cycle he famously burned as he read them. Yet long after Mathias''s death, one copy may still rest with Viridian. If so, why won't she release it? A wry meditation on art as both transformative and on the ways in which it can be leveraged as commerce, as well as a perceptive examination of the female artist, Jean Thompson's novel is at once delightfully funny and wise, and will resonate with readers who loved Lily King's Writers & Lovers, Meg Wolitzer's The Female Persuasion, and Susan Choi's Trust Exercise.
