Despite the Curious Incident
–like title, fans of Haddon's novel will find this collection's pleasures less immediate, but that doesn't mean they aren't here. Forlorn yet resolved in the face of an abrupt change of station, Haddon's speaker makes his way through a Britain that seems composed largely of hotels and rich people, as strange to him as the world was to his earlier protagonist: "above the confusion of forks// you will realize that is/ where your journey starts." Other poems rewrite horatian odes, imagine "Christmas Night 1930" and effect a "decimation" of John Buchan's novel The House of Four Winds
. Technically accomplished and spikily humorous ("You did the Hippy-Hippy Shake/ I messed with Mr. In-Between"), the poems are marbled with scenes of same-sex love and desire, and ruminations on writing, fame and death. They will whet appetites for Haddon's fiction follow-up. (Apr.)
