<![CDATA[GLASSWORKS - book reviews]]>Fri, 31 Jul 2026 07:18:18 -0400Weebly<![CDATA[Review: The Self-Made Saint]]>Sat, 01 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.rowanglassworks.org/book-reviews/review-the-self-made-saint
Motherhood at It's Best
Review: The Self-Made Saint

​Emily Mendelsohn
​
Alexandra Addams
Fiction
High Frequency Press, pp. 266
Cost: $19.95​
No one ever claimed that motherhood was easy. It is full of challenges and growth. Mothers are human beings who are still learning like the rest of us. Young children, however, often begin life thinking their parent is an all-knowing being, but parents do not always have all the answers and they are not always perfect.
Alexandra Addams explores a complicated mother-daughter relationship through the perspective of fifty-nine-year-old Judith, mother to Cassandra, in her debut novel The Self-Made Saint. A self-made saint herself, Judith spent most of her daughter's childhood volunteering in Kenya in refugee camps, and now she is reaping the consequences.
After the end of her unhappy marriage and the death of her mother, Judith escapes from London and moves to Adalaide, Australia to be with her daughter, Cassandra. She believes that Cassandra is just as unhappy in her marriage and assumes she wants to get her away from her husband, Andrew. Judith plans to help her daughter, especially with her new baby, Emily. These plans are thrown off when she gets to Adalaide and is greeted by a very angry Cassandra, and a very ill Emily. ​
The book is written in third person limited, following Judith, which gives the reader a clear idea of what is going on in her head. The generational trauma that this book explores shows just how difficult relationships can be between parents and their children, and more specifically, between mothers and their daughters. Judith’s relationship with her own mother, Marigold, was even more strained than that with Cassandra, and her biggest fear was Cassandra turning into what Marigold wanted. It is in this way that Judith believed she was “saving” her daughter, but was only pushing her further away.
In the book, Judith is desperate to help her daughter take care of her new baby. She notices all the signs that indicate a sick baby, but Cassandra will hear none of it. Addams writes, “Cassandra stared at her for a long moment, and Judtih couldn’t quite place her new expression. ‘Okay, we need to go,’ she said. ‘Goodbye, Mum.’ She marched to the silver Subaru parked in front of the cottage” (30).
The scene showcases the hard relationship between Judith and her daughter, and introduces the main conflict of the novel. This small interaction indicates Judith’s maternal need to help and Cassandra’s strong refusal. She denies that she even needs help in the first place. The cold brush-off Cassandra gives is the perfect example of a daughter who doesn’t want to need her mother. It shows frustration and anger towards her mother, though we don’t find out why until much later. ​​
The key to Judith’s growth is her pesky neighbor, Martha, and Martha’s foster son, Billy. Martha and Judith's moment comes towards the end of the book after a heart-to-heart and a little forgiveness: “Judith didn’t recognize herself as she mopped her cheeks and nose. She’d just confessed to a hideous crime and been forgiven by the wronged party” (171).
This is the beginning of Judith’s redemption arc and the start of a beautiful friendship, despite the hurt she inflicted upon Martha earlier in the story. This one act of kindness showed her that good people aren’t just the ones who help the less fortunate, they are also kind and compassionate to those around them. ​
This messy family next door was all Judith needed in order to finally understand that her daughter did not need help in the way she thought. It's what pushed her to open up her locked away feelings and finally break free from the cycle her mother started. ​​
Alexandra Addams’ ability to convey the insecurities that Judith was feeling throughout the whole novel is what makes this such a compelling story. The way she builds these characters’ relationships over time feels so natural and pulls readers into the story. They are strong and real, and allow for people to realize that it is healthy to be vulnerable and ask for help, and sometimes that is exactly what you need to heal. Addams is able to show clear growth in her characters, as well as explore in an effective way, the relationship between mother and daughter. ​​
This beautifully executed story dives deep into the relationships, and Judith's character growth is one of the best I’ve seen in modern books. Addams’ use of imagery and point-of-view give a unique spin on the topics at hand and allow the readers to really get into the head of this character. What’s most unique about it is the character herself. Most media that feature generational trauma are from the perspective of the youngest generation, which in this case would mean Cassandra. Addams' novel uses the middle generation, Judith, instead. We get to see both her feelings about her own mother, and her desperate need to repair things with her daughter. Through these relationships, Addams creates a strong character arc to show the growth and healing a person can go through.
]]><![CDATA[Review: That Special Something]]>Wed, 01 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.rowanglassworks.org/book-reviews/review-that-special-something
Finding Folly in the Finitude
Review: That Special Something

Dimitrius A. DeMarco

John Popielaski
​Poetry
Sheila-Na-Gig pp. 118
Cost: $17.00
In some way or another, we are all caught in our own modern minutia, marching to the tune of a drum that is beaten for us like eggs in a Sunday scramble. People crave escape. People crave reprieve. People crave a difference in the daily, to either be or see something remarkable, or simply to remark at the unremarkable, and experience joy in a way that can only be described as simple, but special.
​
John Popielaski’s poetry collection That Special Something is a home-brewed, hand-poured draft, best enjoyed on the porch with the sweet, harmonic melody of nature playing in the background. Popielaski trades the business and bustle of our constructed world for the serene scenes of running water in a stream and the cigar smoke in dive bars; the smell of hops and cracked corn; and the sounds of crickets, American toads, and the holy rise and fall of breathing.
The primary achievement of Popielaski’s collection is the ultimate marriage of startlingly simplistic, specific, and immediate images with an overwhelming thematic depth bubbling below the surface. His lines ground the reader in comfortable familiarity, all the while engaging them in an existential, intellectual marathon. The result? A peculiar, albeit effective blend of storm-tossed, gallows-tinged humor and weighty considerations, where laughter is the only reflex to a rather unsettling set of truths. ​
Take for example the poem “Vastness and the Theme of Inescapability,” where the speaker opens the poem with: “the sort of beer I drink is better / in a shapely glass” (lines 1-2) which is a rather inconspicuous and harmless description of an ordinary object. Popielaski then cascades the pouring of his favorite hop-heavy beverage into a larger discussion of BPA and Glyphosate and their effects on male vitality:
sitting ...
in this cushioned Adirondack chair, sipping
a local eight-percenter ...
as I observe a mother
sparrow teaching her buoyant young
to pick and eat the peppergrass seeds.
​(lines 51-55)
It is in this rhetorically employed dichotomic dance of simplicity and depth—running all the way from the title to the poem’s end—that Popielaski unveils his ultimate commentary: we can have a good time living by finding folly in the finitude of dying.
A major part of Popielaski’s technique is his syntactic structures, his lyrical, prosaic, frankly conversational style aids in lulling the reader into that sense of simplicity—particularly in the usage of imagery and sensory details. The poem “About This Business of Deserving” is rich with this tactic, and begins by placing the speaker in a state of contemplation:
One day you realize that you've outlived
a lot of people, children, countless animals,
trees even, all of whom on that day seem
to have deserved duration more than you (lines 1-4)
The speaker then “kicks back” and begins looking at comfortable images of leaves, clouds, trees and toads, then juxtaposing them with existential commentary of “deserving” life, particularly a longer one to that of those trees, animals, children, or:​
the pair of American toads
run over in front of the tilted mailbox
in the thunderstorm last night
after how many hot days without a drop of rain ...
how glorious the downpour must have felt before the headlights bore down (lines 38-41, 45)
The verse and the nature of the speaker's quandary calls the reader to engage with those simple, everyday images, and evokes a significant depth of emotion and a sympathetic response towards things we otherwise wouldn’t look twice at. It is here that Popielaski’s conversation continues, and the reader is again left questioning, just as the speaker was in the poem.
Popeliaski then brings this effect to a fast-poured head in the title poem, “That Special Something.” Placed at the start of the collection, the speaker wakes in a tent, relieves himself, then heads to the water to collect and process in what is an extraordinary expression of ordinariness. Popielaski juxtaposes this with the image of a life: ​
where you will move
from cubicle to cubicle
and sip drip coffee,
fret about such silly things
as thread counts
or the mail (lines 29-34)
The poem is an exploration of imposter syndrome in the natural setting that Popielaski builds, where ultimately the speaker entertains “rebellion” in the form of daring to “sabotage the turbine / for the windmill that’s to be / erected on the ridge ahead” (lines 55-57). Ultimately, the speaker knows that he won’t, as “subversion isn’t in you / and your parents didn’t raise you / to give up yourself” (lines 60-62). This internal conflict and fledgling rebellion quickly snuffed in the stage of embers speaks to the nature of something we all struggle with while living in society: the subtle destruction and little injuries we inflict both on the world and ourselves in the name of “progress.”
Popielaski’s poetry collection is a culmination of experience, and the rich, composted nature of a life that both understands and accepts, yet can’t help but covertly “rage against the dying of the light” and the mad machine that churns us round and out the door each morning. That Special Something reminds us to stop, to reflect, to remember our fathers, and our history, to smell the roses (or more accurately, the native flora) and to drink your fill without fear of chemicals. Popielaski calls to us from over the white picket fences and across the asphalt, and makes a genuine, yet measured appeal to readers to think with their hearts and feel with their heads, and ultimately cautions us not to “grumble with a sigh,” but to take in a long slow drag of gratitude instead, to burst out in a heart-healthy dose of laughter, and to “grin as though we have nothing to lose.”
]]><![CDATA[Review: Abbreviate]]>Mon, 01 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.rowanglassworks.org/book-reviews/review-abbreviate
The Strength in Womanhood
Review: Abbreviate

Erica Rose
​
Sarah Fawn Montgomery
Essays
Small Harbor Publishing pp. 82 
Cost: $18.00​
In Sarah Fawn Montgomery’s new collection of lyric essays, Abbreviate, readers are treated to the captivating beauty of her narrative work and the haunting vulnerability that comes with it. In just nineteen essays, she shares reflections and revelations, transporting us into the critical moments that have shaped her life and, in turn, mirror the experiences of so many women. Her language is both delicate and powerful, a reference to the feminine. At the same time, the unsettling and sometimes horrifying nature of her subjects—pain, loss, identity, womanhood—is skillfully woven together, creating a tapestry of beauty, nostalgia, and truth that lingers long after the final page.
Montgomery’s collection is not simply a recount of her experience; her essays interrogate her past and expand on it. She touches on the abuse she suffered through as a child, the neglect that followed hand in hand, and how life was growing as a person with these events hanging over her head. Montgomery writes with the awareness that to be a woman is to be constantly observed, judged, and shaped by others, yet she also claims the page as a place of defiance, where her own voice becomes impossible to ignore.

In her essay “Planetarium,” Montgomery reflects on the vastness of the universe as a metaphor for the vastness of imagination, especially in girlhood: “Under the covers, I look out the windows at the darkening sky. No one ignores the Milky Way. No one tells the moon what to do. I imagine myself as big as the heavens. I pretend I am so big my stories take up the sky” (9). These lines capture both the wonder and the tragedy of growing up female in a world that works to contain that wonder.  Montgomery relives what it is like for a child to imagine her place in the world, yet the reader can sense how fragile that dream is. The hopes and ambitions of little girls are so often compressed into boxes of should and should not, dictated by cultural norms and expectations that persist across generations. With fresh and interesting metaphors and captivating imagery, Montgomery explores the tension between boundlessness and constraint, between the child who dreams of the stars and the adult who learns the limits of gravity.

Throughout Abbreviate, Montgomery’s essays explore how those limits are imposed not just by men, but by an entire social web—teachers, parents, friends, family, strangers, and even the self. She refuses to reduce her experiences to a statistic, exposing the complexities of human behavior. The result is a series of essays that feel deeply human—achingly honest yet full of grace.

Montgomery’s prose style reinforces these themes; her language and detail blur the boundaries between poetry and essay, giving her words a rhythm that mirrors breath, carrying emotion beneath the surface. Even when Montgomery writes of fear or pain, there is an undeniable beauty in the way she renders it, as though she is reclaiming her story by transforming suffering into art. In her essay “Hug Your Mad,” she writes: “You hug your mad, but it will not disappear, like the memory of your older cousin pinning you down like butterfly Barbie, limbs splayed, face frozen” (25). The use of metaphor to describe a horrific experience and make it seem almost beautiful is a talent. The vivid picture of a scene reminiscent of childhood, yet to an adult—someone who knows what story is being told—a masterpiece on the page emerges in crimson Rorschach. 
​
Ultimately, Abbreviate is not merely a collection of essays; it is an act of reclamation. Her reflections remind us of the shared, often unspoken struggles that define womanhood: the yearning to be heard, the pressure to conform, and the resilience required to endure. In giving voice to her own experience, she gives voice to countless others who have been told to stay quiet. It teaches us that our stories—no matter how fractured or abbreviated—deserve to take up space. Through her luminous prose, Sarah Fawn Montgomery reminds us that our voices, like constellations, form patterns of meaning in the dark, guiding us toward understanding—and perhaps toward ourselves.
]]><![CDATA[Review: Sweeney as a Girl]]>Fri, 01 May 2026 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.rowanglassworks.org/book-reviews/review-sweeney-as-a-girl
In The Eye of the Whirlpool 
Review: Sweeney as a Girl 

Adam Buckley

Jaki McCarrick
Poetry
Daedealus Press, pp. 76
Cost: €12.50 – €20.00
When people leave our lives, relics are left behind as testaments to their existence. These relics are often possessions of loved ones, sometimes stories observed or passed down, and other times, they are us. Jaki McCarrick’s debut poetry collection Sweeney as a Girl conjures a lived-in world via these relics, whether they're rooted in the history of her life, her literary muses, or her homeland.
The first poem, the collection’s namesake, sets the tone as McCarrick dons the visage of the crazed and exiled Irish king of legend, Buile Suibhne, as armor against the struggles of the modern world. In it are the concepts that the collection most often returns to: grief, story, and the beauty of Ireland. The lines “I hate its vacuous Facebook self / I hate its plagues and smoke and mirrors” make textual reaches towards issues such as social media and the Covid-19 pandemic, which conjure themes befit the titular King as an avatar for modern sources of modern isolation (lines 5-6).
These ideas orbit around the reader, giving one the ability to reach out and catch one on the second round if it passed them by on the first. The advantage to this tidal movement of the book’s themes is that they never overwhelm. Early pieces like “Role Reversal” tackle familial grief, and the penultimate, 5-part poem, “The Architect,” shows that the thread is carried throughout the volume in spirit, but forms often vary drastically. Its segmented structure, supplemented by a quote from King Lear as its epigraph, squarely pegs it as a reference to the Bard’s 5 act plays. “Role Reversal” discusses the reflected nature of a child seeing their parent on their deathbed, how the child now must take care of the one who has taken care of them their whole life, sporting a unique form in which the second stanza is the first stanza mirrored, ending as it began, but reflected.
When McCarrick picks a literary muse, these entries typically end up being the most enjoyable to me. Not only do I enjoy art about art, but McCarrick’s take always remained personal and grounded in the collection’s themes. My absolute favorite, “Caliban’s Island,” uses allusions to William Shakespeare’s The Tempest to discuss the complexities of a relationship between an Irish woman and her British partner. The lines, “It was a working relationship. Neither he nor I could / duck or dive our differences, namely his theft / of this place, of which he’d the audacity to be frightened” see McCarrick’s history as a playwright come through as she, like in the title poem, takes on a condemned figure, this time Caliban, and conceives a mask of him, wearing his perceived monstrosity as armor (lines 1-3). What I love most about this piece is how it ties together all the themes swirling around this collection. McCarrick’s penchant for adopting literary identities manifests as a tribute to her Irish pride at the end, or death, of a relationship. If she must be a monster for living on this island, then Caliban she must be.
It pains me to say that poems about Ireland itself usually fell the most flat for me, somebody with a little bit of Irish in them. McCarrick’s language and description regarding the island’s hills and bogs and waves always proved authentic, like in pieces such as “Burnets by the Sea,” but as a non-local, I connected to character-focused works like “Home Ground,” which use Ireland and its place in history to reflect on its place in McCarrick’s life. The poem reflects on her upbringing in London, naming relics of the city like “the South Bank, St Martin’s lane, / the 98 bus, the delicious gust of air / you’d get down St. John’s Wood tube” in order to contrast the "notorious border town” in Ireland she finds herself in, “where alternative views of history can be found” (lines 2, 5-7, 14).
The secret fourth genre of poems in Sweeney as a Girl sees McCarrick as a witness, the relic left behind when birds take wing, months pass by, and memories resurface. These, too, connect to the collection’s themes—like “Migrants” making flock of swans the catalyst for recalling how an uncle died saving another boy from drowning. “The Spider” has us watching the delicate work of a silk spinner, all too aware that a human hand means destruction of its life’s work. What makes these pieces great is the tension between their often unassuming subjects juxtaposed to a feeling of death and destruction that McCarrick keeps lurking nearby.
Sweeney as a Girl puts the reader in the eye of the whirlpool and keeps us spinning around the elemental concepts of Jaki McCarrick’s world. I found myself swimming with it, going with the flow as I gravitated towards one kind of poem or another only to find it once again later, drifting my way. McCarrick has smartly put together a collection of punchy, impactful poetry that settles on you like a film the way it will stay with you long after you’ve resurfaced. ​
]]><![CDATA[Review: Vanishing Points: Words for Disappearing]]>Wed, 01 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.rowanglassworks.org/book-reviews/review-vanishing-points-words-for-disappearing
Changing the Tides on the Climate Crisis
Review: Vanishing Points: Words for Disappearing

Sammi Grasso

Amy Kennedy
Micro Essays
Antenna Press, pp. 204
Cost: $16.00
Amy Kennedy’s Vanishing Points is like the dictionary every person needs on their bookshelf. For such a small print, every page packs a punch while equipping its readers with the knowledge and terminology to discuss and evaluate the climate crisis in a whole new light. A collection of micro essays, Kennedy's Vanishing Points takes the shape of an ecological dictionary that ranges from actual terms such as biosphere, confirmation bias, and greenhouse effect to concepts like boomtown and climate doom. It’s a six by six powerhouse collection that gives concept after concept without much room to breathe. Kennedy’s motivation seems to be: We can only fight against something once we learn the language to destroy it.
For being Kennedy’s first collection, she employs a strong voice through some of the microessays. In her essay “David vs Goliath archetype,” she says, “I hope more than anything that this is a David and Goliath story, that there can and will be a world that isn’t structured around corporate extractivism” (63). Here, there’s a stronger connection that is formed between the author and reader in that she directly calls out to us. It seems like she entrusts us as her audience to accept and even combine our aspirations with hers so that we become one recipient to all of the statistics and examples laid out. It shows us her own hopes, fears, and desires in regards to the future of the world in reference to the climate issue. 
She keeps her hope woven into her language across multiple of her microessays including in her essay “imagination (and fear)”. She describes the correlation between fear and how it activates the imagination in both positive and negative ways. However, she pursues the issue and offers the reader a more encouraging moment: “In order to turn back the doomsday clock– and I absolutely refuse to believe that we can’t– we have to imagine that it’s possible to do so. And we can’t do that if our imagination is paralyzed by fear” (103). After the onslaught of information both from the ground level and the theoretical ties that Kennedy sets up, these brief moments of reassurance and a belief in a brighter and stronger future are a welcome breath of fresh air. 
Anyone who struggles with footnotes or ‘see also’ sections may have a hard time working through the formatting of Kennedy’s prose. Seeing as a majority of her concepts connect and overlap and speak to one another, there are many moments where she will interrupt her prose and add a “see also” that connects to one or multiple other essays within the book. While the purpose is clear, the frequent influx of information may overwhelm readers, who might not yet fully understand the material or may feel pulled into jumping between texts before finishing the original essay. In tandem with this, Kennedy mentions that it’s important to read this book in sections rather than all at once, for even she recognizes how draining the content can be, so be sure to keep that in mind as you approach the text.
Anyone who enjoys reading and discussing the climate crisis issue on not just an ecological level, but political, racial, and class levels will love Amy Kennedy’s read. The micro essays are just that and fit so much information in a little 6x6 book. The decision to include images from different areas that are being affected are a good visual addition to her evidence backlog, and truthfully, more could have been included to show how widespread the issue remains. I find myself walking away from Kennedy’s collection with new ideas and a deeper appreciation for the scientists and environmentalists on the front lines trying to fix our planet before it’s far too late.
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