Really good book. The plot was well-written and engrossing. I look forward to reading more from this author.

Thank you Netgalley for granting me access to an ARC in exchange for an honest review!


It was a nice read, but unfortunately I just couldn't find myself getting into it.

An enjoyable book of poetry. I thought the language was precise and the I thought the poems connected to each other well. I liked how we follow the story from the midwest to an academic or campus life. Good flow and beautiful language throughout.

This is definitely a beautiful poem! and I like it when this book have a great short stories along with poem so we could understand better. It has a good emotional message and I could picture the live growing in a farm. It was good poetry collection that I would recommend to everyone.

It sometimes seems to me that there are two groups of poets. One is heavily influenced by postmodernism and subsequent critical theory, is allusive and difficult, and sometimes very rewarding. The other considers Robert Frost to be the latest thing in poetry, likes to create small narratives, tends towards nostalgia, writes poetry that people who say they don't like poetry can read, and can sometimes be very rewarding as well. It feels like there is a wall between these two groups, high enough to make them unaware the other exits.

William Jolliff is certainly in the latter group. His poems about farm life back in the old days is full of characters, incident, hard work, humour, remembrance of youthful yearning, and death. They have an easy lyricism that would make them very pleasant to read aloud. A number of them are, as the title suggests, about a man looking back to his childhood relationship with his father, an indefatigable, taciturn but nevertheless loving man. The father, however, remains something of a distant figure, just as other characters are given colourful but somewhat superficial treatment.

They do have a lot of atmosphere and many are given last lines with something of a narrative kick. Best read one or two at a time, they have a sameness about them that becomes more obvious when more are read together. Many will enjoy their somewhat rose-coloured depiction of the past (even with all the death and injury) and the old-fashioned storytelling in verse form.

I Did not finish this book. I'm not exactly sure why, but it just couldn't hold my attention. I have to say I doubt it will stand out this year, but I appreciate the rural sensibility the author is embracing. It needed more distinction though, because about halfway through, all the poems begin to blend into one another.

I really enjoyed how William Jolliff wrote about nature and loss, and connected to a few parts of this as I also grew up on a farm with my father. "At Rest in My Father's House" was a simple book of poetry with very straightforward poems. Not bad but not my favorite either.


Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me this ARC!

Personally for me I love poetry that is short and can allow me to interpret the meanings and allow me to come up with my own conclusions.

This poetry book was like that at all but I did live rhe uniqueness of it! I could picture everything happening and how life must have been like to actually live on a farm!
There were lines in these poems that I absolutely adored but I wouldn't say the entire poem would catch my attention but instead those small beautifully written lines inbetween.

I would still recommend if you want to read a cross between poetry and a book!

A beautifully human collection of poetry that celebrates life, love, family and talks about the grief and loss that comes along. It was an immersive experience reading this book. The American context went a bit over my head, nonetheless I loved reading this book.

This is a nice poetry book. I enjoyed the storysheld within the words. The poems read like great short stories about life on a farm. These were enjoyable a day I am glad I read this book. This is not my usual type or preferred type. I like the powerful emotional types but I still found it interesting. The front cover and title just drew me in. As poetry is a very personal thing. What I rate 3 stars might be your 4 or 5 stars book. So I would definitely give this book a go as you can always download a sample from most major retailers to see if it is the perfect match for you. This type of poetry messes with my autism as my head just won't recognise it as poetry. It will only accept it as short stories. So go on give this a try and help support independent authors 

Many thanks to the author and publishing team for allowing me to read this book for review. 

The above review has already been placed on goodreads, waterstones, Google books, Barnes&noble, kobo, amazon UK where found and my blog today https://ladyreading365.wixsite.com/website/post/at-rest-in-my-father-s-house-by-william-jolliff-ibpa-independant-author-3-stars either under my name or ladyreading365

Lyrical and nostalgic poems about growing up on a family farm in Ohio. Those put off by contemporary poetry should find these verse accessible and appealing. A paen to a way of life that has largely been subsumed by corporate farming.

It was a good poetry collection, the subject matter just wasn’t my taste. I’m not American so some things went over my head as well.

Not too bad, i felt his lost, grief and pain towards verses but it was ok. If someone recommend me this poetry book, sure. I don't see more beyond his mind. Honestly it's more cassual and natural all of his words, that's true.

A beautiful poems that tells the story of a family, their journeys, simple life, challenges and at the same time facing the reality of death & grief.

Each poems has its own emotional message that you can pick on as a reader and even in how the characters wants to see life and accepts the reality.

Well written story.


Thank you Aubade Publishing & Netgalley for the ARC.


3.5/5 stars

This was beautifully written stories throughout this book. The stories were hardships, grief, family and loss. I really didn’t know what to expect going into this as it was randomly picked, but it was really good.

I loved this book. As someone who lives in a farming community I could easily picture every thing he described. I am not a farmer or have a family of farmers but my school had a lot of farm kids. I think my favorite poem was the title poem. I could feel his emotion and I just loved how it was written.

Thank you NetGalley for the chance to read and review this book!

I wish I could love this collection, but I just can’t. It bored me a bit and I didn’t want to finish this book.

Jolliff evokes a life that is probably quite different from the life of the reader. A life connected to the earth and nature surrounding us. Dedicated to creating something through hard work and a childhood with very little room for being an actual child. With hands calloused from manual labor and rare tender moments break through the hardened crust. It is hard to stay unaffected when Jolliff writes: “We made it by with common soles, and I think some of us may yet muck our way to heaven.”

William Jolliff's At Rest in My Father's House is an anemoia, a nostalgia of a time I had never known or experienced. He pulls us to this sepia-tinted haze of this farm town in rural Ohio and takes us for a ride on his john deere tractor along the beautiful country roads, cornfields and a community of farming families. Raw, lyrical and melancholic his nature imagery is so authentic and vivid that it did remind me of Anne Carson and Mary Oliver. These hauntingly beautiful stories about these families' hardships, loss, grief and god are similar and as intense as Poet Vairamuthu's Kallikkattu Ithikasam (The Saga of the Drylands). The characters were unforgettable and it literally felt like I'd lived a lifetime with them. Jolliff’s portrayal of his father was interesting and his subtle way of showing love was very heartfelt (in john deere green and suppertime). Most of the poems were really good, some poems I adored include the Gleaners, coming to know my fathers, suppertime, the man who shoots stop signs, the blue plate, and the woman with the wooden arm.

4.25/5

Thank you Netgalley/Aubade Publishing for this book in lieu of an honest review.

William Jolliff's At Rest in My Father's House is a sweeping and stunning survey of grief, not only for loved ones or members of his Ohio farm community, but their way of life as well. My favorite poems include: "The Way My Father Farmed", "In Praise of Cowards", and "The Blue Plate." "The Blue Plate" comes at the exact middle of this work, and was a thesis for this work during my reading, an intimate look at an aging woman whose physical ailments symbolize a physical death as well as the death of the way of life, "Her hopes of growing old and dying at home flee with the evenings. She'll soon be a number to check on some nurse's chart, a body to be lifted and fed." Jolliff accomplishes a remarkable feat with this work, vividly reconstructing a bygone worldview with each poem, with tension bubbling underneath each line. By the end, I felt I had read through the transcript of a eulogy, that I loved and lost and most importantly bore witness to a way of life that is rarely discussed in the mainstream. My only critique of this work was some of the mentions to the Vietnam war felt forced. The most successful poem mentioning post-war trauma, for me, was "The Man Who Shoots Stop Signs." There were also various mentions to farm-hands in a few of the poems, and I think this work would have benefitted from a few more poems from the perspective of the farm hands, though the conjured anonymity establishes a clear view of the still present social hierarchy, even within impoverished agricultural communities. All in all, a great read and a beautiful tribute and historical examination of a forgotten way of life.