... wry, canny ... will delight Bay Area readers, as it’s set here — San Francisco, Marin, Santa Rosa — with superb authority and wit. But the novel may most strike home for poets and writers everywhere as it calmly, systematically depicts their worlds — and, let’s say, field behavior — unretouched ... Descriptions of these characters alone may be worth the book’s price ... Thompson’s skills make us comfortable at once — and she is often very funny ... delivers both an old-fashioned picaresque and real suspense as Carla wends her way through acolytes, wannabes, power struggles and poetry (much of which, to Thompson’s great credit, proves quite fine). Earned wisdom glints from these pages ... But the novel’s supreme glory is its sparklingly accurate chronicling of goings-on at a writers’ conference near Placerville ... Thompson inhabits the mind of an insecure, reading-challenged 21-year-old wonderfully well ... Let this delectable story, which steadily grows taut and exciting, channel its author’s wickedly seasoned observations of 'po-biz.' The novel rewards: as a tribute to the soul-saving value of art, a cri de coeur for women striving to make authentic lives, and a pipeline of guidance from the elders to the emerging. The Poet’s House offers many rooms, infinitely worth the tour.
... a closely observed, droll, coming-of-age story about an insecure young woman drawn into a shimmering clique of poets; it's also a wise story about the corrosive power of shame and the primal fear of sounding stupid, unsophisticated and sentimental ... Thompson is such a nuanced writer that she avoids 'either/or' categories. Like most people, the larger-than-life Viridian is a lot of things at once: a prima donna, for sure, and a bit of a manipulator, but also a sincere mentor. Writing through Carla's perspective gives the alert Thompson an opportunity to nail the social class microaggressions and misunderstandings that pop up again and again in conversations with Viridian's coterie, who literally speak a different language ... As absorbing as that plot is, however, it's Thompson's charged depiction of Carla's unfocused yearning to be more that powers this story and makes it so emotionally resonant. The Poet's House, as I said, is a keeper.
... partakes of the charm, if not the sting, of the fairy tales the author updated in her 2014 book of stories, The Witch: And Other Tales Re-Told ... is as much about women’s power in the world, poetic or otherwise, as it is about the power of poetry. And in the novel the power of poetry speaks for itself, in offhand and formal quotes from Shakespeare, the Bible, Byron and Yeats, among others, and in the reading and reciting of some quite wonderful poems with which Thompson supplies her 'pew-ets,' as Aaron affectionately refers to them ... There’s no doubting and no escaping the joyful, hopeful spirit that inhabits The Poet’s House — the spirit of poetry that by the end of this charming novel Carla so clearly embodies — and the irrepressible Jean Thompson so smartly imparts.
... Many times, right up to the very end of the book, the reader wants to say — What? No! ... Thompson gets it all right — the real poets, the wannabes, the hangers-on; the self-important literary magazine editor, the crude commercial novelist, the hard-nosed money guy ... You know you've met a believable character when three days after you finish the book you're still thinking, She did what? and Why, again? Couldn't she have called me and gotten my advice first?
Even the least likable of these admire Carla and Viridian, and the story is enhanced with dialogue ranging from laugh-out-loud funny to lines of poetry. The Poet's House forecasts hope for young Carla even as Viridian faces mortality. Readers will long recall these women fondly.
... charming ... Part of the fun of The Poet's House is in its small details and memorable descriptions ... But the biggest pleasures are Carla's evolution, the many well-drawn characters and subtle pokes at the competitiveness of the literary world. The novel occasionally takes too long to develop its themes on its way to a tidy conclusion, but this doesn't distract from its ample joys, not least of which is Carla's recognition that she is like the finest poems: complex and wondrous, with hidden mysteries and graces
Ever insightful, imaginative, compassionate, and funny, Thompson ... is a virtuoso of thorny interactions between wholly realized characters rife with contradictions. And she is so in her element, bringing this richly dimensional book-anchored mise-en-scène to life with lacerating wit and rueful tenderness while adeptly interleaving a poet’s long, covert battle against sexism and regret with the verdant tale of a young woman taking root in an unexpectedly sustaining realm.
In her usual accomplished and sensitive fashion, Thompson invites us into the consciousness of a young woman tentatively entering a whole new world that may give her a clue to who she is meant to be, while at the same time fearing that the enticing, glamorous creatures who live there simply view her as a useful helpmeet. The plot is propelled by various people trying to persuade Viridian to make public the last poems of her lover Mathias, a poet even more famous than she by virtue of killing himself at 35, but the real story is Carla’s gradual realization of what she wants and what she can be. The brilliantly rendered mise-en-scène of quarrelsome, ego-ridden, yet touchingly fragile poets and the literary entrepreneurs who circle around them makes a vivid backdrop for this classic coming-of-age tale ... More thoughtful, elegantly written fiction in the classic realist tradition by the gifted Thompson.
Thompson intriguingly explores the contours of the literary world through the eyes of an outsider ... Thompson’s talents for immersive storytelling and sharp characters are on brilliant display, particularly in her portrayal of Carla’s longing for something greater, and of Viridian’s conflicted feelings about Mathias’s work. The author’s fans will savor this.
