Archer aptly cites O. Henry, along with Saki and John Buchan, as his masters, but the real model for these tales is the...
Despite the title, none of the 14 stories megaselling Archer (The Eleventh Commandment, 1998, etc.) exhibits here are abridgements of potential novels; practically all of them are expansions of paragraph-length anecdotes.
The tendency to embroider pat morals is clearest from the titles of the nine stories based on actual incidents. A champion of apartheid receives a tolerance transplant along with the heart of the African his automobile killed in “A Change of Heart.” A house built on the troubled border of the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland comes under attack in “Both Sides Against the Middle.” The brief “Love at First Sight” could easily have been boiled down further to an anniversary toast, or still further to “boy meets girl.” Even when Archer’s detailing the confidence schemes that give shape to so many of these tales—the hoary deception in “Something for Nothing,” the more elaborate moneymaking plot in “Crime Pays,” the plausible suitor who lays siege to a wealthy wife in “Too Many Coincidences”—their cleverness takes a backseat to the image of the conscientious recorder jotting down notes from a daily newspaper. The stories Archer makes up himself are just as foursquare and functional in their moralizing. A wealthy widower tests the affections of his heirs by pretending to be bankrupt in “The Endgame.” A self-regarding artist who spends a lifetime sponging off his brother gets his comeuppance in “Chalk and Cheese.” Everybody at Critchley’s Bank wishes he were somebody else in “The Grass is Always Greener . . . ,” a theme treated just as effectively a hundred years ago, and at a third the length, in O. Henry’s “The Social Triangle.”
Archer aptly cites O. Henry, along with Saki and John Buchan, as his masters, but the real model for these tales is the after-dinner speaker who wouldn’t dream of taxing your brain after the long day you’ve had.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2001
ISBN: 0-06-018552-X
Page Count: 272
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2000
A first collection of stories with great first lines, usually followed by fictions as light as air—some antic or absurd, others delicate or touching. The title piece is one of the best: a good-humored comedy about an Indiana girl out West, a sort of bounty hunter looking for cheerleaders in the mountains who've never been seen but ``were part of the mountain mythology.'' ``Better Be Ready 'Bout Half Past Eight'' is both hilarious and moving: `` `I'm changing sex,' Zach said.'' That first line starts off an absurd chain of events as seen through the eyes of Zach's best friend. Zach, who becomes Zoe, is finally forced to say, ``I think you're letting this come between us.'' Baker's tone, light but not frothy, is just right. But those two stories are the high points here; others are slick entertainments, albeit with sober undercurrents: ``The Spread of Peace'' (first line: ``If peace spreads, Heather may lose her job'') is about a weapons designer at the end of the cold war who's also faced with a lump in her breast; ``My Life in the Frozen North'' is a mock explorer-narrative told by a young woman, ``the child of explorers,'' who learns that ``The law of life in the Frozen North is Eat,'' and comes to realize, sadly, that her parents ``discovered nothing''; and ``Clearwater and Latissimus'' is the moving story of Siamese twins, told by a naive (and ``normal'') fellow student. Other pieces here are shapeless or cutesy, but the best are luminous with verbal play and intimations of how ordinary strangeness can be. (Some have appeared in Atlantic, the Best of the West, New Stories from the South and various lit mags.)
Pub Date: June 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-8118-0324-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Four connected long stories from Le Guin (A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, 1994, etc.) featuring the planets Yeowe and Werel, the latter a slave-owning oligarchy, the former its colony. Contact by the wise, multi-planet space civilization, the Ekumen, lends impetus to revolutions on both worlds. The slaves of Yeowe oust their brutal Bosses after a savage seven-year struggle; later, the slaves of Werel rise up to topple their Owners. But on Yeowe the women discover that they have overthrown the Bosses only to be oppressed by their own menfolk; and so begins their slow but implacable fight for equality. In "Betrayals," the disgraced but enlightened revolutionary Abberkam finds redemption in his burgeoning love for the teacher Yoss. "Forgiveness Day" tells the tale of Solly, the Envoy of the Ekumen of Werel, who, at the beginning of the slaves' revolt, is kidnapped and imprisoned with punctilious but honorable soldier Teyeo, her bodyguard. Havzhiva of Hain, Solly's assistant, is "A Man of the People" who helps the women of Yeowe with their own nonviolent revolution. And "A Woman's liberation" is narrated by Radosse Rakam, born a slave on Werel, eventually to become instrumental in the women's revolution on Yeowe—and Havzhiva's beloved. Whether constructing a moving and expressive love story, or articulating the feminist subtext, there is no more elegant or discerning expositor than Le Guin.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 006076029X
Page Count: 240
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1995
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