Book Review

Frances and Bernard by Carlene Bauer was inspired by the friendship of Flannery O'Connor and the poet Robert Lowell.

Albert Goldbarth is the author of six collections of essays and more than 25 books of poetry. He has received the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. Twice. And he lives in our backyard.

In the preface of her novel Y, Marjorie Celona writes about that perfect letter. "The wishbone, fork in the road, empty wineglass. The question we ask over and over... Coupled with an L, let's make an adverb... a Greek letter (that) joined the Latin alphabet after the Romans conquered Greece in the first century--a double agent: consonant and vowel. No one used adverbs before then, and no one was happy."

Louisa Clark lives in a small English town with her parents, grandfather, sister and nephew. She has no secondary education, the cafe where she waits on tables closes, and when her father loses his job, it's up to Lou to become the family provider. She takes a job as a caregiver for Will, a formerly larger-than-life man in his 30s who is now confined to a wheelchair as a quadriplegic.