THE IDEAL BAKERY

by Donald Hall ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 1987

Thirteen stories that range from the writing-school standard to the eloquently poignant, by poet, anthologist, and non-fiction writer (Fathers Playing Catch with Sons, 1984) Hall. By far the best here is the title story, a study in nostalgia, told by a grown man who remembers a father who was to die young and a mother who suffered bouts of madness, and who now contemplates with a quietly lyric humility the bittersweet cruelties of passing time. Other pieces take on the subject of the past also with lingering effect, as in the slighter and Dylan Thomas-esque ""Christmas Snow"" (memories of Christmas in the w Hampshire of 1939) and the half-surreal ""Widower's Woods,"" a Frost-like cry of pathos about the sorrow of old age. The longer ""The Figure of the Woods,"" however, drifts toward the artificial when a father and son come upon a decomposing body in a New England trout stream, and other stories fall prey to an even greater thinness and staginess--as in ""The First Woman"" (30 years later, an insensitive man looks up the first woman he made love to), or in the tin-eared banalities of ""Keats' Birthday,"" a forced yoking of Keats, breast cancer, and an unintentionally shallow American couple in present-day Rome. Numerous smaller pieces strike home with a traditional compactness--Hall can perfectly imitate, say, the feel of a John O'Hara story, as in ""Mr. Schwartz"" (about anti-Semitism among the Brahmins) or ""Revivals"" (a theater has-been remembers his sexual failures)--though other shorter pieces merely strike empty notes (""Embarrassment,"" for example, is a tongue-clicking trifle about the callousness of the successful and rich). The closing story, ""Argument and Persuasion,"" staggers a little Under the weight of its own structure but offers moments of allure (and a useful lesson plan, too) in its Updikean portrayal of a life-worn English teacher. Uneven stories in many voices, with the best handful quite lovely indeed.

Pub Date: May 15, 1987

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: North Point

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1987

Categories: FICTION