“Mrs. Hopewell had no bad qualities of her own but she was able to use other people’s in such a constructive way that she never felt the lack.�
Mrs. Ho“Mrs. Hopewell had no bad qualities of her own but she was able to use other people’s in such a constructive way that she never felt the lack.�
Mrs. Hopewell thinks she has it all figured out, with her favorite sayings, “We all have different ways of doing,� and “it takes all kinds to make the world go ‘round,� and “that’s life!� She thinks she knows good country people when she sees them, but then a Bible salesman comes to call.
I love Flannery O’Connor. She is strange and dark but so revealing, and the best at this sort of fabulous take down. ...more
“The sins of others are ever before you, while you resolutely keep your own behind your back.�
This was written the same year as The Kreutzer Sonata, “The sins of others are ever before you, while you resolutely keep your own behind your back.�
This was written the same year as The Kreutzer Sonata, which worried me at first, but this one has a moral I can get behind. More a sermon than a fable, but a decent story of the dangers of arguing with your neighbors. ...more
“There is a game which children play in which they creep up to one who is hiding his eyes; step by step, frozen still with innocence at each quick gla“There is a game which children play in which they creep up to one who is hiding his eyes; step by step, frozen still with innocence at each quick glance they go tentatively forward, until at last they grow close, close to the point of touching.�
I think this might be my second favorite Taylor novel so far, right after Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont. They are similar in a way, as they deal with regret, about adjusting to what life has brought us, something not what we expected.
In this story, we meet Harriet, who is infatuated with the aloof and troubled Vesey. Their connection is her mother Lilian and his Aunt Caroline, old friends from their days as suffragettes. Harriet and Vesey are eighteen, and spending a last of many summers together at Caroline’s, where Harriet is paid to help to care for her children, and Vesey is sent to escape his own unreliable mother. They meet again many years later, after Harriet has married and has a teenaged daughter of her own.
Around Harriet and Vesey Taylor gives us a diverse set of characters who are experiencing their own very different regrets, with unexpected layers revealed about each of them. There is a comically real group of ladies Harriet works with in a dress shop, her sadly dull husband Charles, the couples� closest friends Kitty and Tiny, Charles� overly-dramatic mother, and their daughter Betsy who is going through obsessions of her own. Each of these characters feels whole and unique, and each provides us ambiguity and surprises.
I think what Taylor is so good at is showing us something we often forget about ourselves and our fellow humans. Her characters are often average and not always likable, just like us. What she uncovers, what we forget sometimes, is the uniqueness, the beauty in the ordinary. These surprises, along with the open-endedness of her characters� stories, make the reading experience authentic but strangely magical at the same time.
�'There is no one else like me,� she told herself. ‘I represent no one. I am typical of no one. No one else thinks my thoughts or understands my hopes or shares my guilt. I am both better and worse than I would admit to other people.’�
An odd but curiously moving story from a remarkably talented writer....more
A man condemned to death dreams a dream, and in the end we are left to ponder which dream is the “right� dream. Dreams are wonderful material for storA man condemned to death dreams a dream, and in the end we are left to ponder which dream is the “right� dream. Dreams are wonderful material for stories, and this one is no exception. Short but powerful, if you let your imagination expand on it.
A special layer to the story: O. Henry died in the middle of writing it--literally mid-sentence, and the story was completed for him by an editor, based on Henry’s outline. ...more
This is a really good book for helping understand story structure and development. Primarily for screenplays but with plenty of overlaps to novel writThis is a really good book for helping understand story structure and development. Primarily for screenplays but with plenty of overlaps to novel writing, it gives you the building blocks of story development. Lyons works from what he calls the Invisible Structure, and then ties it to the Visible Structure. The most challenging and helpful was the moral component, consisting of a moral blind spot in the main character that they don’t see but others can, and how this is central to a successful story.
Great for someone with a work-in-progress who is stuck with a sagging middle of their story or unsure that their structure is working as well as it should.
His mantra: “Listen to everyone. Try everything. Follow no one--you are your own guru.�...more
“A pity beyond all telling is hid in the heart of love.� William Butler Yeats
Ah, first love. O’Brien was so in tune with the feelings of many a young “A pity beyond all telling is hid in the heart of love.� William Butler Yeats
Ah, first love. O’Brien was so in tune with the feelings of many a young girl.
“All the perfume, and sighs, and purple brassieres, and curling pins in bed, and gin-and-it, and necklaces had all been for this.�
This is possibly the best story about first love that I can recall right now. The idiocy of it. How self-centered it is, how much it is tied up with our own self-esteem. How heart-breaking, how life-changing, and how much we rely on our friends to help us through it.
Caithleen, the green-eyed girl, has Baba as a friend (who makes me grateful for the friends I had when I went through that time). I don’t much care for Baba, but she is funny and makes a great partner for Kate--one brash, the other shy. For Kate, this whole experience was mixed up with her feelings about her family and religion, which was a really interesting enhancement of the story for me.
“He had the rough voice which most people down there have. It is a voice bred in wind and hardship, and it is accustomed to shouting at things.�
Kate and Baba have moved away from home to Dublin, where they share a room in a boarding house and go out as often as possible for a “gas,� as Baba says. Kate works in a grocery shop and reads Tender Is the Night on the sly. There are men in their lives, but they’re on the disappointing side, until Kate meets an older man, Eugene Gaillard.
I knew there was something special about Edna O’Brien’s writing after I read The Country Girls. Why did I wait so long to read this second in the trilogy? She reminds me a little of Françoise Sagan, and I think I’ll find her equally reliable for enjoyment and much better for depth.
This was a very fast read, and not just because it’s relatively short, but more because my interest never waned, not even for a paragraph. I don’t know what O’Brien’s secret sauce was, but it works and made for a lovely reading experience. I now want to be an O’Brien completist, but that’s probably impossible, since she was very prolific. I promise myself to get to Girls in Their Married Bliss soon, and then maybe have a go at a short story collection. ...more
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