![]() ![]() When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk-“So she can tell me if something happens”-but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother. ![]() The tone is light and droll, and the narrative is peppered with canny imagery, including a comparison of jumping toy poodles to “popcorn popping” and a description of Bradford after the walk, flopping down exhausted “like a drunken, first mate.” Quadland’s watercolor illustrations are beautifully detailed and perfectly evoke the bucolic setting and Bradford’s adorable persona.Ī charming depiction of simple pleasures. Although the book is subtitled A Bit of Doggerel, its verse is as energetic as Bradford himself, with an irregular meter and unpredictable rhyme scheme that effectively stave off monotony. In unpretentious verse, O’Neill offers an idyllic odyssey in which a grown-up city dweller returns to the joys of childhood with a dog as his guide. Meanwhile, his human companion finds himself transported back to his youth, marveling at the restoration of an old “haunted” house and signaling to passing truckers who reward him with a booming honk of the horn. Along the rambling path to the water, the dog merrily lifts his leg to leave “his John Hancock / in five hundred places,” “hoovers up smells,” and ebulliently faces off with passing cars and other dogs “at the ends of their ropes.” The good-natured Bradford is equally at home racing along the sandy shore and squeezing through the gates of a seaside mansion to roll in its lush forbidden grass. Bradford bounds off, leading the narrator to the shore of Long Island Sound. There, he’s roused from bed in the early morning by the nuzzling muzzle and insistent barks of Bradford, “a dog / in a very plain wrapper” who lives with the narrator’s mother. The human, unnamed narrator of this waggish tale is a former Connecticut native who’s recently traveled from a city, where he has an apartment, to visit his rural home. In an illustrated poetic narrative for all ages, a charismatic hound takes stock of his domain as he romps through his daily constitutional. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |