books and literature Archives - The Hyacinth Review

Green Sanctuary

Simone Martel — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 04:00:00 +0000

When I first read Rumer Godden’s An Episode of Sparrows, it wasn’t considered a novel for children. It was just a novel. My mom was a librarian at the Oakland Public Library, and I would go with her to work on Saturdays and pluck from the shelf any book that looked interesting to me. The…

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Passion Realized, Passion Repressed: Symbols of Passion in The Scarlet Letter

Abbie Mourey — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 04:00:00 +0000

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is a novel suffused with symbolism. Indeed, Hawthorne introduces his novel as a symbolic act: an examination and apology of the role his ancestors played in the Salem Witch Trails (6–11). The best-known symbol within the work is the scarlet letter itself, which Hester Prynne wears on her dress for…

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It Is Your Ninetieth Summer, You Tell Me

J.J. Steinfeld — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 04:00:00 +0000

We reach for the same poetry book by a young hotshot poet with an old man’s eye for sorrow. I hand you the thin volume as if I had attempted a theft and recoiled with remorse. It is your ninetieth summer you tell me, and I am as tall as your husband was who you…

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The Word Thief

Patrick ten Brink — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 04:00:00 +0000

I have a confession, kept secret for years. Now that I am no longer who I was, I can share my story without fear of being seen as a monster. It may sound more like a misdemeanour than a crime, but it was, to me, a crime, an admittedly strange crime, flowing from a strange,…

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Cento for the Poet

Carol Taylor Was — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 04:00:00 +0000

Nothing I’ve done seems to matter…I wanted to do more in this life, not the elusive prizes, but poems that astonish. — Barbara Crooker, from “Melancholia” Who else would have celebrated oxygen cascading down our throats when speaking about the glories of breath, or called on God of the ginkgo trees and God…

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All The Unread Books

Allison Burris — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 04:00:00 +0000

Obviously the shelves are never reasonable. Just yesterday our guests knocked an overhanging pile to the floor. The books are regularly conspiring they want to make everything more precarious, desperate for attention. Schemers, they make your heart thump to remind you readers are thrill seekers despite what everyone else might warn about the importance of…

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Book Burial

Maria Cohut — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 04:00:00 +0000

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She Was an English Professor

Suzanna de Baca — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 04:00:00 +0000

This is not my home, you say. You were in a living room With thirteen other women, your words nearly gone. She was an English professor, I tell the staff. She loved books. Sometimes I read to you and it calms you, even though I don’t know if you can understand. But they’re silly dog…

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Motherhorror: On the Uncanny Art of Raising the Unknowable in Schweblin and Ferrante’s Novels

Mirela Dialeti — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 04:00:00 +0000

“Strange can be quite normal. Strange can just be the phrase, ‘That is not important,’ as an answer for everything. But if your son never answered you that way before, then the fourth time you ask him why he’s not eating, or if he’s cold, or you send him to bed, and he answers, almost…

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If they give you ruled paper, write the other way

Anne Eyries — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 03:00:00 +0000

In the desert there’s no signthat says Thou shalt not eat stones, though behind every great fortune there’s crime as Offred can confirm from the front linein Margaret Atwood’s scarlet tomes.In the desert there’s no sign says To Kill a Mocking Bird is fine;Scout comes from a lawyer’s home, knows behind every great fortune there’s…

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