Dream Island Home for Isabelle Huppert

Following on the trail of Crucifox, and picking up its scent, Isabelle Huppert, cunning and vulpine, tries out a range of exotic roles as actor and aesthete. An old lady has a factory to supply her with rouge. A headmistress wolf-whistles builders. Abducted girls call out from cupboards and crevices, and Pre-Raphaelite models complain. The spirit of Isabelle’s ideal home hangs in the air, drawing on histories and geographies both mythical and subversive; and ‘many rooms’—waiting rooms, fainting rooms, kitchens, sick rooms, parlours, television studios, convent cells— honeycomb the book.

Her search takes her to the transgressive cubicles of the central Bluebeard sequence and culminates in a meeting with a 17th Century Mexican proto-feminist nun. There is fasting, feasting and fornication; the lamenting and celebrating of homes real, imaginary and ideal. The animal kingdom is ever-present, howling in doorways and undergrowth, belying a polite exterior. A heavenly dog presides. Flowers and demons abound.

In Dream Island Home for Isabelle Hupert Geraldine Clarkson has pulled out all the stops, allowing her imagination to run unfettered and giddy across the glowing lawns and softly carpeted spaces of her poetic home from home. This astonishing ''super-collection'' speaks of abandon but also of discretion and timidity, and a deft editorial hand. Poems call to each other across the pages, reprising themselves and their characters, opening doors and windows before slamming them shut. Poetry has seldom been this exuberant - at once care-worn but also care-free! This is an astonishing piece of work!**