Weightless Books

Like Terese Marie Mailhot’s Heart Berries or Claire Dederer’s Love and Trouble, award-winning poet Jennifer Militello’s Knock Wood tells the story of a family and a woman growing up.  Anchored by a wooden ring and the superstition of a knock that prevents misfortune, Knock Wood centers on three intertwined elements: the life of a mentally ill aunt in an abusive marriage; Jennifer’s high school romance with a boy who eventually dies of a heroin overdose; and an extra-marital affair characterized by an otherworldly connection. Cause and effect reverse as significant events—an arrest for a felony committed in high school, a trip by train to meet an illicit lover, and a suicide attempt on those same New York tracks—seem to influence one another outside of time and space.

Posted on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2019 at 12:00 am.