Praise for Open House
“Beth Ann Fennelly is an ambitious and spacious young talent. The poems range widely in form and subject matter. . .there is a striking accuracy of language and notable skill that sets them apart, displaying a promising, authentic voice.”
—Paul Zimmer in The Georgia Review
“With its high spirits, its love of textures of different kinds of writing, its search for ways to frame ambitious energies . . .the poem advances with a determination to keep the author interested and alive to her materials; in places, amused with itself and hopscotching, in places veering into unexpected depths; an immensely lively performance.”
—Robert Hass in his critical introduction to The Kenyon Review’s New Voices feature.
“Fennelly’s poems are consistently dramatic, complex in their perceptions and formal unfolding, enthralled with language. . .This is one of the most interesting, challenging, and accomplished first books to appear in recent years. . .Genuinely outstanding.”
--The Harvard Review
“Beth Ann Fennelly’s Open House marks an auspicious debut for a poet not yet thirty years of age. In poems ranging from blank verse variations on the traditional sonnet to a sustained mediation in the highly elliptical and haunting polyphonous postmodernist mode, Fennelly tempers cognitive power and sensual wordplay with a subversive wit born of wry self-knowledge.”
--Floyd Collins, Westbranch
“Fennelly approaches language with playfulness and reverence, heady with possibilities, wary of dilution. She takes on personas such as Milton’s daughter or a survivor of the siege of Paris in dramatic narratives that one could forget are verse. Nearly half the book is a journal of the poetic mind in process, guarded by the internal critic, Mr. Daylater. For all that, Open House is surprisingly readable, ending with a handful of graceful love poems.”
--Tim Rauschenberger, The Christian Science Monitor
“These poems can be elegiac, passionate, meditative, tender, angry, and funny by turns. Beth Ann Fennelly is clearly a poet to watch.”
--The Notre Dame Review
Praise for Tender Hooks
“Move over, Sharon Olds, and make way, Denise Duhamel! Fennelly is a southern poet who writes of her own female experience as carnally, or perhaps incarnally, as either of those northerners . . .This is awesome, humanely humbling poetry.”
--BookList, starred review
“Fennelly’s second book follows close upon her first, Open House, a well-received winner of the 2001 Kenyon Review Prize. In this equally engaging new collection, Fennelly is caught up with the birth of a daughter and maps her obsession. . . .Fennelly counters academic pretension with American spunk. A smart and vivacious book.
--Library Journal
“There are so many reasons for everyone, male or female, to read this collection. Fennelly is the sort of poet who reminds her readers why verse is so important to daily life. She cracks open pretension, and her in work, which is both accessible and high-minded, she suggests that poetry is, in fact, vital to our very existence.”
--The Capitol Times, Madison Wisconsin
“There’s nothing easy or casual in Tender Hooks. As mommies everywhere know, motherhood is not for sissies. Fennelly sees her family as “a large target,” “a glass-smooth pond / just begging for a stone.” These poems are as sweet and loving as the title suggests, yet the face of Sylvia Plath peers out of more than one.”
--David Kirby in The Atlanta Journal Constitution
"Yes, Tender Hooks is mostly about motherhood, but Fennelly's vision has more in common with Tarantino's than Martha Stewart's. One long, rich poem placed at the center of the collection, 'Telling the Gospel Truth,' puts the blood and sweat back into the nativity, before moving on, cleverly and without contrivance, to contemplate the fatuity of poems that use 'dinner knives to check for spinach in their teeth." Fennelly's poems aren't mannered, needless to say. They're plain, funny, and raw, and if you want to buy a present that isn't cute or dreamy for a new mother then Tender Hooks will hit the spot--and won't stop hitting it even though it's sore."
--Nick Hornby, The Believer
"Fennelly is officially one of my top ten poets."
--Sheman Alexie, ShermanAlexie.com
Praise for Great with Child
"Superb."
--Good Housekeeping
"A reflective, transformative book"
--Book List
"I read Great with Child at one sitting, crying and laughing throughout. Beth Ann Fennelly has written an instant classic, filled with humor and wisdom, a necessary and beautiful book which will be cherished not only by an endless line of mothers-to-be, but by every woman who wants to remember what it was really like to become a new mother."
--Lee Smith
"The writing is at once rhythmic, exuberant, and passionate. To enjoy it, one most definitely doesn’t have to be an pregnant, just someone who revels in richly told stories."
--The Mobile Press-Register, Mobile, AL
"Give this book to anyone who is "great with child"; she will be eternally grateful. Fennelly's missives are alternately moving, funny, and practical, with an unusual honesty about just how hard it is to be a young mother.
--The St. Petersburg Times
"By turns poetic and funny, dreamy and direct, "Great with Child" might be the best book ever to give for a baby shower."
--The Tampa Tribune
"The themes will strike a cord with any mother or mother-to-be. This elegiac tome captures motherhood with candid finesse."
--Child
"This book sang its heart out to me, and I clapped my hands in time."
--The Capitol Times, Madison WI
Praise for Unmentionables
"Insouciant, sexy, funny, and dead-on, Fennelly crafts perfectly metered lines and quick-turn stanzas steeped in the blues and rock and roll in which she riffs on sights, sounds, and moments at once ordinary and suffused with implication . . . .A true pleasure to read, Fennelly is gloriously womanly, dancing-on-the-table daring, and supersmart."
--Booklist starred review
"Beth Ann Fennelly's third collection of poems, Unmentionables, is substantial in every way. Fennelly meshes seemingly incompatible motifs with brash wit, lyrical verve, and verbal legerdemain, balancing, with the riskiness of a tightrope walker sans pole, sans net (perhaps sans rope), her multiple personae. . . The ride she offers along the back roads of Lafayette County, Mississippi. . . is unsettling, passionate, and joyful."
--The Commercial Appeal, Memphis TN
"You get an entire bookful of images in just a page or two. . .these poems are so full of movement and color because, in many of them, the poet is trying to hammer out a truce between passion and domesticity, between a whirlwind libido and the need to put dinner on the table. . . . The last poem invites the reader not to exit noiselessly but to turn around and walk right back into Fennelly's feast of light and sound and enjoy it all over again."
--David Kirby in Paste
“This is a poet easy in her own skin, delighted by the provocations and exhaustions of sex, but knowing the losses of time. . . . Poems drawn from the poet’s past burn with Byronic bravado, as if there were acres of life yet to be lived. Such poems have a don’t-look-in-the-rearview fearlessness.”
--The New Criterion
“Fennelly is officially one of my top ten poets.”
— Sherman Alexie, www.fallsapart.com
Praise for The Tilted World, co-authored with Tom Franklin
“A captivating Deep South drama that unfolds in the spring of 1927 as the rising, roiling waters of the Mississippi River head toward an epic and catastrophic flood. . . . a beautifully written, smartly crafted thriller that offers many delights . . . With romantic twists and tense scenes that make it hard to put down, the book is a pleasure . . . The writing is deft and memorable, at times potent with emotional punch.”
— Associated Press
“A new novel from Tom Franklin is always a reason to get excited, but a novel from Franklin and Fennelly is just cause to throw a block party.”
— Dennis Lehane
“The story is intricately plotted—a breath-catching thriller—but beyond that, it’s also a clean and lyrical narrative, thus producing a rare literary combo, one that tempts you to ration yourself to ten pages a night, and to tell your friends that it’s the real thing, a literary thriller. You will experience a sprawling story of conflict, disorder, shame, and horror that is umbrellaed by an even bigger story—one of love.”
— Clyde Edgerton, Garden & Gun
“The husband-and-wife writing team of Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly navigate the flood in their massive new novel The Tilted World. It is a masterful effort. . . . A tale that deserves comparison to Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain, another literary novel with plenty of action.”
— Wilmington Star News (NC)
“The Tilted World is everything I hold dear in a novel—a raucous, page-turning story with grit, utterly steeped in the land and people, and told in such poetic language that I forced myself to slow down so I could enjoy it. It’s hard to remember that this is the work of a team rather than a singular, inspired mind. I hope this is the first of many novels from Franklin and Fennelly—together they offer a unique and captivating voice.”
— Eowyn Ivey, author of the The Snow Child
“A suspenseful, emotionally moving novel . . . The authors superbly depict the bonds of maternal, romantic, and brotherly love, and their slangy dialogue and piquant metaphors enrich their setting. This is a full-bodied shot of bluesy Americana with just the right amount of grit, heart, and woeful longing, and it goes down smooth and satisfying.”
— Booklist (starred review)
“A swift, soulful mix of love story and crime saga . . . evocative characters and unpretentious but shapely prose . . . literary crime fiction of the highest order.”
— Seattle Times
“The Tilted World is a beautiful and thrilling story. With lush language and the urgency of a sandbag operation, Fennelly and Franklin capture the texture of southern life during Prohibition in ‘poor cotton country’ in a year when the rains won’t stop. Dixie Clay is irresistible, an American original, a girl who shoots, bargains, and bootlegs (and falls in love) with the best of them, and the descriptions of the Mississippi gone mad will haunt my dreams. And though it seems rather obvious: This story swept me away.”
— Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of Once Upon a River
“Franklin is enamored of the people and history of the South. Poet Fennelly finds inspiration in the secret anxieties and joys of parenthood. Together, the husband-and-wife team created Dixie Clay, struggling to find closure after the loss of her child . . . A pleasurable work of historical fiction rife with religious symbolism and romance.”
— Library Journal
“[A] prohibition-era tale of bootleggers and revenuers, an atmospheric draught of prose that is at once poetic and gritty. . . . fans of Fennelly will savor her depictions of a mother’s ferocious love, and Franklin’s following will shine to the violent rendering of a nearly forgotten time and ethos.”
— Publishers Weekly
“While The Tilted World is beautifully told from beginning to end, the memorable narration does not sacrifice the story of these star-crossed, erstwhile lovers whose entire world is on the brink of both salvation and tragedy. Franklin and Fennelly take the first two thirds of the book to set things up, and spend the last third pushing their readers to the edge of their seats. This is a strong, frightening and ultimately uplifting tale of redemption and justice that will not be easily forgotten.”
— Bookreporter.com
“An epic tale of loyalty and betrayal that plays out in the shadows of the artificially heightened levees . . . the most satisfying aspect of the novel is the vivid characterization as Dixie Clay and Ingersoll struggle to dovetail their respective interpretations of right and wrong.”
— Irish Times
Praise for Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs
“Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs contains essays that are sometimes as short as 10 words, but add up to a surprisingly maximalist portrait of a life.”
--The New York Times
“Varying in length from a single sentence to several pages, the essays in [Heating and Cooling] are told with wry self-awareness and compassion; each piece illuminates how the manners and minutiae of everyday life . . . are underpinned by deep-rooted human needs and beliefs.”
--Poets & Writers
“The micro-memoirs showcase a range of emotions that belies their brevity—taken from another standpoint, their brevity is what gives them power.”
—Wall Street Journal
“It's a cliché to say you'll laugh and cry, but it's likely you'll do both.”
--Danny Feekes, managing editor, Goodreads. Named 2017 Goodreaders Favorite.
“The 52 micro-memoirs in genre-defying Heating & Cooling offer bright glimpses into a richly lived life, combining the compression of poetry with the truth-telling of nonfiction into one heartfelt, celebratory book.”
-- Deep South Magazine
“Consistently entertaining. . . poised, eloquent, and full of moments of tenderness.”
--Electric Literature
“Fennelly packs a lot into each short piece, with some lighter in subject matter and others with a sudden punch-in-the-gut feel, weighted with existential exploration. Potent despite their brevity.”
--Library Journal, (starred). Listed as one of top four “Autumn Memoir Picks.”
“A rich, varied, and refreshingly unpredictable portrait of a woman in her prime . . . Readers, you are in for a hootenanny of a wild ride. This is Fennelly at her most laid-bare, wickedly funny, and irrepressibly poetic best.”
--The Kenyon Review
“Fennelly has an eye for the absurd, for those telling little moments that make up a life and build memories. Some are humorous, some are moving. Others are heartbreaking.”
--Florida Weekly
“An author of bold perception, powerful femininity, and candid vulnerability. This deceptively slim, convention-defying collection delivers surprisingly generous rewards.”
--Booklist
“A poet and fiction writer delivers 52 ‘micro-memoirs’—some just one sentence, some a couple of pages—that offer insight into her life, the lives of loved ones, and the overall human condition. . . .Although the concept and structure of the book are experimental, on the whole, the writing is more straightforward, lucidly composed, and often highly evocative. A sleek, delightful collection.
--Kirkus
“These pieces . . . showcase Fennelly’s signature freshness and candor. If you’re a fan of Beth Ann Fennelly’s previous books of poetry, which had many poems bordering the hybrid edge of prose, you will be a fan of this book of “mini-memoirs.” And if you’re not a poetry fan, but a memoir fan? Heating & Cooling will work for you, too. Whether you read it as poetry or memoir, this collection will invite you into the delicate balance between the challenging, sometimes squalid, human condition and the beauty and sadness of the transcendent.”
--The Rumpus
“Ultimately, what this book creates is that elusive thing we all want: happiness.”
--Chapter Sixteen
“And now Beth Ann Fennelly gifts us with Heating & Cooling, her wry and insightful micro-memoirs—some a few pages long, others a paragraph—that read like the type of revelations one hears from a new friend, that moment when the good stories come out: the defining, quirky, funny ones, the sad ones that demand a pause, and even those that, with a kind of verbal hands-up shrug, offer what’s strange and inexplicable. And afterwards, certain moments will remain and tug at you, turning something you thought you knew into something you still have to ponder.”
--Ninth Letter
Beth Ann Fennelly’s genre-defying collection is so engaging and readable that you won’t even notice how much you’re learning about confronting the hardest challenge we all share: being human. Wise, irreverent, funny . . . Everyone should read this book.
--Atlanta Journal Constitution; named one of AJC’s Best Books of 2017
“These vignettes should be savored slowly, deliberately, thoughtfully. . . There is a delight in holding the tiny tome with its fetching green cover and a picture of the last bit of an icy purple popsicle, the smallest cool, sweet morsel waiting to be devoured in one bite.”
--The San Antonio Express-News
“She embeds small tragedies within moments of humor, simultaneously punching the reader in the gut and offering us a release from excessive melancholy. . . Heating & Cooling is an endearing read.”
--American Microreviews & Interviews
“This tiny book packs many mighty punches as Fennelly takes on Catholicism, cancer, marriage, motherhood, and mortality. . . When you close this book, your everyday world opens.”
--Jackson Clarion-Ledger
“Written with intense focus, Fennelly’s latest book is a treasure trove of snapshots. Beautiful, concise, and heart-pumping, Heating & Cooling is a must read. It’s a book I’m going to carry—the way I carried Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son—in my back pocket.”
--Riverteeth
“As Heating & Cooling alternately flares up and chills out, it captures the ordinary and extraordinary moments of existence and renders them all vital.”
--Ozy
“Every sentence in this book could be sent to the Smithsonian Institution in case future readers want to know what great a sentence looks like. And it’s proof that a book doesn’t have to 1,000 pages long to contain all the big feelings and ideas. They are all here in these beautiful, very short true stories—love, grief, joy, and fun. Which should be counted as a feeling, but isn’t. Because when someone asks you, ‘How do you feel?’ wouldn’t it be great to say, ‘Fun! I feel fun!’ Anyway, great book.”
--Daniel Wallace