You often write on the topic of jealousy." So says a chance acquaintance to narrator I.B. Singer in one of the 20 stories here. And never before has the Singer preoccupation with sexual jealousy, or romantic disillusionment, seemed so intense (and so limiting) as it does in this new collection—which occasionally beguiles but mostly disappoints. In one tale after another, the same scenario—usually set in pre-WW II Poland—unfolds predictably: a man discovers that the woman he loves is unfaithful, a "whore" whose betrayal turns the man into a bitter cynic. Three stories offer a clinical variant on this model: the married man (perhaps latently homosexual) who encourages his wife's adultery. Even "The Last Gaze," about the funeral of an elderly man's middle-aged girlfriend, turns into another faithless-woman fable. And only one version—"The Bitter Truth," in which the husband remains blissfully ignorant about the wife's perfidy—provides enough texture or twist to sustain interest once the formula takes over. When Singer does explore other subject-matter here, the results are generally thin and anecdotal. In "Disguised," a wife discovers her ex-husband's sexual secret: territory covered more richly in earlier Singer stories. "The Missing Line" and "The Accuser and the Accused" offer strange, mildly intriguing happenings from the Yiddish Writers' Clubs of Singer's past. Quirks of character—obsessive gift-giving, blind passion—are the subtance of "Gifts" and "Dazzled." The supernatural turns up in three pieces: "The Jew from Babylon" is a miracle—worker losing his lifelong battle against the "Evil Ones"; "Sabbath in Gehenna" is a whimsical glimpse of political unrest among the sinners of Hell; the title story treats ancient Methuselah to hellish visions of corrupt, kinky Sodom—which make him welcome death. And "Logarithms" features the conflict between secular intellect and religious orthodoxy. Only one story, in fact, has the full-bodied flavor—if not the full development—of prime Singer: "The Hotel," about the meeting of two unhappily retired businessmen in Miami. Completely missing are the richly autobiographical excursions that gave some previous collections such mischievous bounce. So this is very much lesser Singer: always readable, of course, but rather monotonic and undernourished.
Pub Date: April 1, 1988
ISBN: 0140186980
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1988
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
In Lives of Girls and Women and The Beggar Maid (the Flo and Rose stories), Canadian short-story writer Munro drew unusual strength and sharpness from the vivid particulars of growing-up with—and growing out from—a stifling yet intense Canadian background. Here, though a few of these eleven new stories reach back to that core material effectively, the focus is looser, the specifics are less arresting, and Munro's alter-egos have moved on to a real yet not-always-compelling dilemma: over 40, long-divorced, children grown, these women waver "on the edge of caring and not caring"—about men, love, sex. In "Dulse," an editor/poet vacations alone, away from a troubled affair—and is confronted by sensuality on the one hand and the "lovely, durable shelter" of celibate retreat on the other. Two other stories feature the hurt and compromise involved in "casual" affairs—casual for the man, perhaps, less so for the woman. And in "Labor Day Dinner," the divorced woman is trying again, but with a sometimes-cruel man ("Your armpits are flabby," he says) whose love must be periodically revived by her displays of (unfeigned) indifference. Still, if these studies of to-care-or-not-to-care uneasiness lack the vigor of earlier Munro (at their weakest they're reminiscent of Alice Adams), a few other pieces are reassuringly full-blooded: "The Turkey Season," about a teenage girl who takes a part-time job as a turkey-gutter and learns some thorny first lessons about unrequited love; the title story, in which a woman's trip to the planetarium illuminates her turmoil (a dying father, a rejecting daughter) with metaphor; wonderful, resonant reminiscences about the contrasting spinsters on both sides of a family. And Munro's versatility is on display in other variations on the caring/not-caring tension—between two aging brothers, between two octogenarians in a nursing-home. Only one story here, in fact, is second-rate ("Accident," an unshapely parable of adultery, guilt, and Fate); Munro's lean, graceful narrative skills are firmly demonstrated throughout. But the special passion and unique territory of her previous collections are only intermittently evident here—making this something of a let-down for Munro admirers.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1982
ISBN: 0679732705
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1982
IN THE NEWS
The thirty-one stories of the late Flannery O'Connor, collected for the first time. In addition to the nineteen stories gathered in her lifetime in Everything That Rises Must Converge (1965) and A Good Man is Hard to Find (1955) there are twelve previously published here and there. Flannery O'Connor's last story, "The Geranium," is a rewritten version of the first which appears here, submitted in 1947 for her master's thesis at the State University of Iowa.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1971
ISBN: 0374515360
Page Count: 555
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1971
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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