Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Alvarez, Julia - Fred Muratori (review date Winter 1986)

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Fred Muratori (review date Winter 1986)

SOURCE: A review of Homecoming, in New England Review and Bread Loaf Quarterly, Vol. IX, No. 2, Winter, 1986, pp. 231-32.

[In the following excerpt, Muratori praises the poems in Homecoming.]

The sonnet lives … in a first book by poet and fiction writer Julia Alvarez…. "33," a sequence of forty-one sonnets that takes its title from the poet's age, fills half the volume [Homecoming]. It's a diary-like assemblage of meditations, stories, and confessions, of which the following is fairly typical:

        Ever have an older lover say: God!
        I once thought I used to love so and so
        so much, but now that I love you, I know
        that wasn't love! Even though it feels good
        at our age to be flattered with being
        the first woman a man has ever loved,
        it...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Fred Muratori (review date Winter 1986)
   2. Cecilia Rodríguez Milanés (review date July 1991)
   3. Donna Rifkind (review date 6 October 1991)
   4. Jason Zappe (review date Winter 1991)
   5. Julia Alvarez with Catherine Wiley (interview date March 1992)
   6. Ilan Stavans (review date 10 April 1992)
   7. Bruce-Novoa (review date Summer 1992)
   8. Elizabeth Starcevic (review date August-September 1992)
   9. Julia Alvarez (essay date February 1993)
   10. Ilan Stavans (review date 7 November 1994)
   11. Dwight Garner (review date Winter 1994)
   12. Roberto González Echevarría (review date 18 December 1994)
   13. Janet Jones Hampton (review date Spring 1995)
   14. Rochelle Ratner (review date 15 April 1995)
   15. Publishers Weekly (review date 24 April 1995)
   16. Ruth Behar (review date May 1995)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. Julia Alvarez