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 burns my blood thinking of those I loved
        with my whole soul (small as it was back then)
        quibble...