5/28/2023 0 Comments Averno by Louise GlückDuring this period their grandmother dies, their mother experiments with going back to work, and they are “distracted, like all babies, by feelings of triumph. Ten short chapters tell us – though not in exact chronological order – about the first year in the life of twin girls, the eponymous Marigold and Rose. Marigold and Rose can be devoured in a single sitting, and that’s probably the best way to enter its tonal world, which is strangely hypnotic, in part because the mood never swings to violent intensity, and in part because of the orderly rhythms of Glück’s prose. None of this has changed in her first published fiction. In 13 poetry collections and two volumes of essays, Glück’s emotional intelligence never surrenders to cosy consolation, yet the writing remains exquisitely beautiful. While her earlier work explores family psychodrama, these books portray the emotional violence of mid-life. The Seven Ages, from 2001 – a stunning reflection on human destiny – was preceded by both The Triumph of Achilles (1985) and Ararat (1990), for example, and followed by Averno (2005), named after the traditional site of the entrance to hell. They might have added that she makes the individual female experience universal, joining it to the canon of male mythology in ways even her titles make clear. W hen the American poet Louise Glück was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 2020, the Swedish Academy commended her “voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal”.
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