GONE: A Thread of Stories

by Rumer Godden ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 29, 1968

When a great lady of the humming looms of lending library fiction chooses to empty her workbasket of unpublished or neglected short stories, inevitably the result is uneven but bares, withal, the mark of the artist. A dreadful story leads off, all about the brutal treatment of a suffering child; but two charming sketches of home-and-school anguish with two English sisters follow. No sooner has the reader become involved in the tea-toast-and-catarrh mystique of an English childhood, then two more forays into sentimentality and windstrewn emotions, in which ladies lament city living while country homes call. However, there is a charming story of an inopportune gift of handsomely bound erotica to a bachelor uncle; a high-keyed but absorbing portrait of a young girl about to enter a religious order; and a painful, effective story of a fastidious English spinster and the rude intrusion of sexual pursuit. These stories are introduced by engaging comments on their beginnings, the ""grits"": incidents, ideas, in the author's own life which gave rise to the imaginative construction. A bonus gift for the Godden group.

Pub Date: May 29, 1968

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1968

Categories: FICTION