Three and a half stars, rounding up to four. There are some lovely poems in here - most of the ones that spoke to me most were in the final section, "The Healing". I think my very favourite was a short little poem - and the majority of the poems in here are very short - of about five lines, which compares the body to a museum of natural disasters. There's something so extraordinary about that image, something surprising and wonderful... I just really loved it.

The reason the collection doesn't get a solid four stars from me is that I sort of bounced off the third section - "The Breaking" - about the dissolution of a romantic relationship. It went on a lot longer than the others, and was more repetitive. And I understand that this is something absolutely true to life - recovery from a break-up isn't and never has been linear. But you know how when a mate breaks up with their partner? It's easy to be sympathetic and you want to help them, but in some cases it drags on and on and you just want them to move the fuck on already so you don't have to hear them moan anymore. That's what I felt. Which makes me unsympathetic and unkind, but still. I don't see the point in fantasising about how the girlfriends that come after you will never match up to you, because, you know, some of them will. And that's alright. There's only so much autopsy of misery I can take before it strikes me as self-indulgent, is what I'm saying. So, not the third section. But the others, particularly the last, were lovely.