THE COLLECTED STORIES OF CAROLINE GORDON

by Caroline Gordon ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 23, 1981

Three stories here--""The Olive Garden,"" ""A Walk with the Accuser,"" and ""The Waterfall""--are previously uncollected; the rest offers all of Gordon's short fiction from earlier volumes. Wife of Allen Tate, critic/anthologist Gordon has a taste for the serial--clusters of stories about the Civil War, about a retired professor and avid fisherman named Aleck Maury (her most famous fictional creation, in a 1934 novel, Aleck Maury, Sportsman, as well); and she will worry a situation down until it shakes out a pearl or two. In ""The Brilliant Leaves,"" the precision sentences which render a girl's accidental and sickeningly fatal fall from high and slippery rocks are superb--but a conglomerating fire never truly gets started off these fine sparks. Gordon's best story, perhaps her best-known one as well, is ""The Captive""--about a white settler woman captured by Indians, then escaping. Its clean, elementary lines give it the enduring quality of tale that even an adult would like to hear before bedtime. Nowhere else, though, is it equaled here; and so this is an interesting but less-than-essential compilation.

Pub Date: April 23, 1981

ISBN: 0374531633

Page Count: -

Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1981

Categories: FICTION