By the River (review)

Australian poet Steven Herrick paints a delicate portrait of a boy's life in a small town that lazes by the side of a slow-moving river. Harry Hodby's days unfold in sharply sensual free-verse poems with few lines over seven syllables; he plays soccer, swims, watches his brother fall in love. He himself is enamored with the eighteen-year-old school secretary, who has to leave town when she becomes pregnant by the town tough. Harry carries out a secret revenge on the offending boy, who tries unsuccessfully to find out who keeps throwing rocks through his windows. Meanwhile, Harry tries to understand the lives and loves of those around him, especially his father, who seems to have come to terms with a life of sameness and sadness, taking his pleasures in books about faraway places and visits to his wife's grave. Harry longs to leave the town by the river, but it is a soft longing; the atmospherics of his life are etched with grief over losing his mother and later a girl who might have become a girlfriend, and there is no real urgency to leave those ghosts behind. This isn't an eventful accounting, but it will appeal to readers who favor warmly realized character development and well-executed language over complicated plots and angsty protagonists.