What's most worthy in this hefty, three-part volume of still more Hemingway is that it contains (in its first section) all the stories that appeared together in the 1938 (and now out of print) The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories. After this, however, the pieces themselves and the grounds for their inclusion become more shaky. The second section includes stories that have been previously published but that haven't appeared in collections—including two segments (from 1934 and 1936) that later found their way into To Have and Have Not (1937) and the "story-within-a-story" that appeared in the recent The garden of Eden. Part three—frequently of more interest for Flemingway-voyeurs than for its self-evident merits—consists of previously unpublished work, including a lengthy outtake ("The Strange Country") from Islands in the Stream (1970), and two poor-to-middling Michigan stories (actually pieces, again, from an unfinished novel). Moments of interest, but luckiest are those who still have their copies of The First Forty-Nine.
Pub Date: Dec. 2, 1987
ISBN: 0684843323
Page Count: 666
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1987
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Noted Scottish poet, novelist, and playwright Brown (A Time to Keep, 1987, etc.) celebrates the dark season of the year in the Orkney Islands with 18 always luminous if sometimes lifeless stories. Suffused with old Norse and Christian beliefs, the tales are all set in the northern islands once ruled by the Vikings. Many characters, like the stubborn farmer in ``The Paraffin Lamp,'' who uses the electric light only when he needs to fill his old lamp, still observe the traditional rituals, especially those of the Yule season, that ease the passing of winter. Inured to hardship and frugality, the islanders must contend with weather that is always changing (``one day is wind and flung spindrift, the next is loveliness beyond compare''). And this protean weather is sometimes center stage, as storms and blizzards dramatically take lives: In ``A Boy's Calendar'' and ``Dancey,'' two babies, the sole survivors of ships wrecked by terrible storms, are adopted by childless women and become islanders. In other pieces, the weather is simply part of the fabric of daily life: Men and women race to harvest crops before the rain comes, or to harvest fish before a blizzard strikes. Three notables are ``Lieutenant Bligh and Two Midshipmen,'' ``The Woodcarver,'' and ``A Boy's Calendar,'' in which, respectively, Bligh, of Mutiny on the Bounty fame, visits the islands and signs on two local men; an imaginative husband, who finds refuge from his acerbic wife in drink and carving, becomes an unwilling cultural icon; and a young boy describes the round of work and celebration in a typical year. Stories such as ``St. Christopher'' and ``The Road to Emmaus'' give the saint's life and the Crucifixion a local setting, while ``A Crusader's Christmas'' recalls the Viking era. Cumulatively, an affectionate but muted portrait of a far place where both heart and spirit are strong, though the days are often short and bitter.
Pub Date: Feb. 15, 1996
ISBN: 0-7195-5435-7
Page Count: 246
Publisher: John Murray Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
A first collection from veteran Goran (a memoir, The Bright Streets of Surfside, 1994, etc.) consists of 11 low-key stories set in and around an old neighborhood hangout—the Irish Club—where the locals get together to drink, to dance, and always to talk. The locale is working-class Pittsburgh in the years following WW II, a period when the fires from the steel mills still lit up the skies and jobs were plentiful. The mostly male habituÇs of the club, founded by the Ancient Order of Hibernians, Local No. 9, have known one another from boyhood—``they entered as children, put on years, wrinkles, and emerged on other spring evenings decades later accomplished drunkards.'' Protagonists are mostly Irish-Americans, though a Jewish neighbor, Clifton, is the narrator in several stories, including ``A Girl Like Sheila,'' ``The Madonna of the Jukebox,'' and ``The Road to Damascus,'' in which, respectively, Jimmy McKenna, a veteran obsessed with Sheila, a young woman, ends up being hospitalized for his violent behavior; an image of a woman, perhaps the Madonna, appears on the wall behind the club's jukebox, only to be painted over by the exasperated barkeeper, tired of the crowd sitting and watching it; and Neil, a noted philanderer, describes how he lost Deirdre when a friend of his waylaid her on her way to an assignation with him and told her she was ``too young to make decisions that'll stay with you forever.'' In other notable pieces, Conall O'Brien, who loves prostitutes, can't forget them even when he marries (``The Payment''); and Jack Lanahan, the high school art teacher, finds his ecstasy-inducing ``visits'' from the past more meaningful than his belated success as a sculptor (``The Last Visit''). A gritty and vibrantly ethnic Pittsburgh is the liveliest presence here. Otherwise, Goran's tales fail to strike a fresh note, seeming more like set-pieces with unsurprising characters behaving in predictable ways.
Pub Date: March 17, 1996
ISBN: 0-87338-539-X
Page Count: 144
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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