Errata

by Lisa Fay Coutley

COR series Open Competition winner
Finalist, INDIEFAB Book of the Year

Lisa Fay Coutley’s lyrical debut collection, Errata , investigates the delicate balance between parent and child, love and loss, hope and grief. Errata ’s narrator reflects on struggles and fears that span generations in compositions that are at once musical and bleak. Coutley’s narrative journey is often a dark one, exploring not only the loss of loved ones but also the potential to lose one’s very self. The collection unravels the lingering consequences of abuse and addiction, yet threads of hope and determination weave a finely wrought path through the dark side of human relationships, illuminating the power of the will to survive. Coutley’s sharp yet tender collection will both haunt readers and move them to reflect, to remember, and most of all, to persevere.

Genres: Poetry, Literary Fiction

88 pages, Paperback

First published December 15, 2015

Reviews

[Ericka Clou · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poetry is so hard to write about, especially without sounding you're a novice aspiring poet yourself. But here goes anyway: These poems feel very geological but the terrain is all feelings and memories. The poems are dark, but the terrain is bright. There is a languid feeling about the poems, but the terrain is urgent with extremes of cold and heat. After reading through the collection I felt hollowed out, not in a depressed way, but in a satisfying way.

[joseph godoy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lisa Fay Coutley's Errata explores complex, emotional territory that can often be difficult to talk about. Her poems have the right balance of emotions: darkness without melodrama; mysticism without obscurity; and sentiment without sappiness. I'll be reading this again, for sure.

[Danielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

You don't merely read this book, it burns through you.

[Grant Cousineau · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read about 60 percent novels, 20 percent short stories, 10 percent nonfiction, and 10 percent poetry. And as poetry requires you to read slower to fully appreciate it, still collections like these can fly by as fast as headlights on a highway simply by page count.

That said, Lisa's collection was one I tried to savor, only reading one or two a day over the course of several weeks. Knowing her personally, I can hear her voice in the words, envision the scenery she paints with the clarity of familiarity. While the collection is mostly tragic or deceptively hopeful, it paints a singular image of a woman reckoning with the pains of her past, with her parents, her sons, and even her pets. Of the many favorites, stand-outs include My Lake, the impassioned personification of a place so familiar it feels like family, and For My First Dog, with its sprinkles of innocent shame.

There are countless others, but more than the individual pieces, I really enjoyed the tone of the collection, as if getting to know the woman I went to college with over a decade ago, all over again. The images and metaphors read both naturally, and as if fine-tuned to those hard to describe moments in life, and the sounds of the wordplay rolling around the mouth (yes, I always try to read poetry aloud) was both smooth and, at times, musical, just as it should be. Even if you haven't had the pleasure of meeting Lisa or hearing her read these poems, there's plenty of wonderment and brilliant rhythms here to leave you wanting to return to these poems again and again.

[Emmett · Rating 2 out of 5]

Apparently I’m the sole 2 star review so far.
I liked maybe five of these.The repeating images made me feel like I was having deja vu. I legit checked a few times to see if I’d already read the poem I was on. They all bleed together into one big lump.

[Ben]

Thinking about America. Or what America looks like in 2015 anyway.

[Amber · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full disclosure: I won this through Goodreads' FirstReads