Scan barcode
worstwitch's review against another edition
5.0
A magical short story collection - Dinesen grasps the undercurrents running through situations, settings and characters (in a very Anais Nin like manner) in a beautiful, intuitive style. Reading more of her soon.
madda_lena's review against another edition
challenging
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
3.5
nealadolph's review against another edition
3.0
In January of 2016 my life was changing. I had just begun my final contract extension at work and had just decided to move to Colombia to study Spanish in May, after my contract had run its course. I had recently finished reading a wonderful collection of short stories by the great contemporary master of the form, Alice Munro, and was in need of another. So, here I was, my life in a moment of change, and my next several months predetermined to be very busy, and me without a collection of short stories to read in those brief moments of reprieve from the rush of moving across countries. And, as I am not intending on coming home for Christmas this year, I also knew that the winter of 2015/2016 would be my last winter for at least one more rotation around the sun. In celebration of this great season, the one that turns some Canadians into recluses and others into adventurers of the white world, I grabbed Isak Dinesen’s Winter Tales from my bookshelf.
It turned out, for reasons which I do not completely understand, that the winter of 2015/2016 would be unusually frail in Saskatchewan. Very little snow fell from the sky, and the mercury rarely dropped below -20C. For a Canadian,a prairie boy, who revels in snow and in cold, in snowshoeing and cross country skiing, this was a tragic development. Unlike many of my friends I was cursing El Nino for taking away that sacredly Canadian season.
It turned out, for reasons which I do not completely understand, that this collection of short stories was also unusually frail and, like the season in which it was read, often disappointing.
Isak Dinesen is one of those names which sometimes pops up as a missed opportunity for the Nobel Committee to award a woman who was certainly deserving and so, having some regard of the prize and believing that it often awards (or almost awards) many writers who are remarkably talented, I came to this collection expecting something really quite astounding. And, at times, that is what I found. Dinesen is a very good writer, particularly because of her description of the natural world in which her stories are set. There were many times where I was impressed by her words, her poetry, the ways in which she described waves, or lakes, or woods. It was, often, simply lovely, and it is for these descriptions that I decided to keep the collection for some further research into her writing.
The stories, on the other hand, are generally weakened by a poor sense of direction. I suppose that this can be attributed to the style which Dinesen is attempting to mimic. Her stories are mostly set in the late 19th century, that period when Europe hadn’t been afflicted by the scourge of total war, and so the stories lilt through an innocence and sense of direction similar to many of the more romantic works which were coming out at the time. For moments I felt like I was watching a period movie but transferred to a period story collection: I felt like I was reading some contemporary of Oscar Wilde or Edgar Allen Poe or some less accomplished student of Trollope or Dickens, a writer who was raised in that same notion of high class humanity and notions of chivalry (I hesitate to say either George Elliot or Jane Austen for reasons related to the quality of the craft on display here - both Elliot and Austen are quite a bit more careful with their writing than Dinesen was in this collection). In my reading, I tend to avoid too many authors who have such unrelatable notions of humanity and charity. This made connecting to the characters here difficult.
Which isn’t to say that I didn’t connect to the characters or nearly appreciate the stories as they were. Each one contained something that I enjoyed and maybe even adored, but each one took whatever theme or character trait I was connecting to and decided to throw it out the window. False starts followed false starts in this collection. Indeed, if you read my updates from reading this collection, I often noted this frustration. In almost every story I wanted something very different than what I got and I couldn’t figure out why.Too often, after completing a story, I found myself wondering “So what? Why did I read this story? What was I supposed to get out of it?” and came away with empty answers. Again, I wonder if it is because I couldn’t connect with the ideas of class, gender, romance, and Christianity which were being presented here, and would struggle to say that her descriptions of nature were in and of themselves any true discussion of man’s relation to nature. They were merely set pieces, some kind of pathos.
The collection improves with the final few stories, and there are one, two, or three that I would even recommend (The Young Man with the Carnation, The Pearls, The Fish, and A Consolatory Tale come to mind). And ultimately the themes settle down a bit into something a bit more consistent and predictable. Here you have stories which are attempting to make sense of family - particularly of the relationship between child and parents. In some cases the child is biological, and in many others the child is adopted. This is pleasant enough, I suppose, but ultimately, often, quite boring.
All of this made rating this collection quite difficult, and I decided on the default of a three out of five stars because I wanted to generously recognize the writing talent on display here. It is a hard three though, and at times bordered on a two rather than a three. This is in contrast with the threes I have recently assigned to Petals of Blood by Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar, both of which struggled with that fourth star.
Which makes me wonder if I will read Isak Dinesen again in the future. Perhaps I’ll chase down the two books which are widely regarded as her masterpieces (Seven Gothic Tales and Out of Africa) and give them a solid shake or two, but this is only because I have discovered that this collection is one of her minor works and largely regarded as a rare misstep by an otherwise impeccable author. But I won’t rush to do so. Perhaps one day, in one future January, I’ll pick it up and give it a go.
As a side note, I never know whether to call Dinesen by her actual name, Karen Blixen, or by the pseudonym which is on the cover of this book (but, on my copy of Out of Africa, is followed, in parenthesis, by Karen Blixen). Pseudonyms make life hard. Remember that Elena Ferrante.
As a second side note, it is worth noting that so many of these stories feel as though they are missing a good, strong, threatening winter of the sort that you find in Canada more often than not. The ones where the air hurts your lungs when you breath in too deeply, or when, while walking, you try to balance the needs of the body to stay warm and the danger of having sweat accumulate and freeze to your skin. I suppose the Old World has it so much easier.
It turned out, for reasons which I do not completely understand, that the winter of 2015/2016 would be unusually frail in Saskatchewan. Very little snow fell from the sky, and the mercury rarely dropped below -20C. For a Canadian,a prairie boy, who revels in snow and in cold, in snowshoeing and cross country skiing, this was a tragic development. Unlike many of my friends I was cursing El Nino for taking away that sacredly Canadian season.
It turned out, for reasons which I do not completely understand, that this collection of short stories was also unusually frail and, like the season in which it was read, often disappointing.
Isak Dinesen is one of those names which sometimes pops up as a missed opportunity for the Nobel Committee to award a woman who was certainly deserving and so, having some regard of the prize and believing that it often awards (or almost awards) many writers who are remarkably talented, I came to this collection expecting something really quite astounding. And, at times, that is what I found. Dinesen is a very good writer, particularly because of her description of the natural world in which her stories are set. There were many times where I was impressed by her words, her poetry, the ways in which she described waves, or lakes, or woods. It was, often, simply lovely, and it is for these descriptions that I decided to keep the collection for some further research into her writing.
The stories, on the other hand, are generally weakened by a poor sense of direction. I suppose that this can be attributed to the style which Dinesen is attempting to mimic. Her stories are mostly set in the late 19th century, that period when Europe hadn’t been afflicted by the scourge of total war, and so the stories lilt through an innocence and sense of direction similar to many of the more romantic works which were coming out at the time. For moments I felt like I was watching a period movie but transferred to a period story collection: I felt like I was reading some contemporary of Oscar Wilde or Edgar Allen Poe or some less accomplished student of Trollope or Dickens, a writer who was raised in that same notion of high class humanity and notions of chivalry (I hesitate to say either George Elliot or Jane Austen for reasons related to the quality of the craft on display here - both Elliot and Austen are quite a bit more careful with their writing than Dinesen was in this collection). In my reading, I tend to avoid too many authors who have such unrelatable notions of humanity and charity. This made connecting to the characters here difficult.
Which isn’t to say that I didn’t connect to the characters or nearly appreciate the stories as they were. Each one contained something that I enjoyed and maybe even adored, but each one took whatever theme or character trait I was connecting to and decided to throw it out the window. False starts followed false starts in this collection. Indeed, if you read my updates from reading this collection, I often noted this frustration. In almost every story I wanted something very different than what I got and I couldn’t figure out why.Too often, after completing a story, I found myself wondering “So what? Why did I read this story? What was I supposed to get out of it?” and came away with empty answers. Again, I wonder if it is because I couldn’t connect with the ideas of class, gender, romance, and Christianity which were being presented here, and would struggle to say that her descriptions of nature were in and of themselves any true discussion of man’s relation to nature. They were merely set pieces, some kind of pathos.
The collection improves with the final few stories, and there are one, two, or three that I would even recommend (The Young Man with the Carnation, The Pearls, The Fish, and A Consolatory Tale come to mind). And ultimately the themes settle down a bit into something a bit more consistent and predictable. Here you have stories which are attempting to make sense of family - particularly of the relationship between child and parents. In some cases the child is biological, and in many others the child is adopted. This is pleasant enough, I suppose, but ultimately, often, quite boring.
All of this made rating this collection quite difficult, and I decided on the default of a three out of five stars because I wanted to generously recognize the writing talent on display here. It is a hard three though, and at times bordered on a two rather than a three. This is in contrast with the threes I have recently assigned to Petals of Blood by Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar, both of which struggled with that fourth star.
Which makes me wonder if I will read Isak Dinesen again in the future. Perhaps I’ll chase down the two books which are widely regarded as her masterpieces (Seven Gothic Tales and Out of Africa) and give them a solid shake or two, but this is only because I have discovered that this collection is one of her minor works and largely regarded as a rare misstep by an otherwise impeccable author. But I won’t rush to do so. Perhaps one day, in one future January, I’ll pick it up and give it a go.
As a side note, I never know whether to call Dinesen by her actual name, Karen Blixen, or by the pseudonym which is on the cover of this book (but, on my copy of Out of Africa, is followed, in parenthesis, by Karen Blixen). Pseudonyms make life hard. Remember that Elena Ferrante.
As a second side note, it is worth noting that so many of these stories feel as though they are missing a good, strong, threatening winter of the sort that you find in Canada more often than not. The ones where the air hurts your lungs when you breath in too deeply, or when, while walking, you try to balance the needs of the body to stay warm and the danger of having sweat accumulate and freeze to your skin. I suppose the Old World has it so much easier.
bibliophiliadk's review against another edition
3.0
Hverken god eller dårlig. Mere kedelig end spændende. Men så igen, jeg er virkelig ikke fan af noveller, hvor man skal lede efter den skjulte mening. Det gider jeg simpelthen bare ikke. Den eneste historie, der faktisk gjorde et indtryk på mig var 'Peter og Rosa'. Meget gribende slutning.
kikiandarrowsfishshelf's review against another edition
5.0
I went to Denmark, pretty much, to see Karen Blixen's home. It is a beautiful place; the land around the house, including Blixen's grave, has been made into a bird santucary. The house is near the water, and at least when I went there, the walk from the train station included passing what looked to be a Nor. Fjord breeding farm. There was even a resturant with Blixen inspired art work (pricey but very nice) and excellent food.
It seems strange that when reading Blixen's non-fiction what comes across is her love for her farm in Africa, yet reading her fiction what comes across is her love for Denmark and its history. This dual love is actually reflected in her house, with its Africa interior yet its Danish exterior.
In many ways, too, the stories in this volume remind me of that house. Take for instance, "Sorrow Acre", the story that I always like the most in this volume ("The Cloak" is her best story, at least to me). The story tells of a mother's desperate attempt to save her son, yet juxaposes this with a relationship between the old lord, his wife, and his nephew, Adam. The story not only calls to mind the Danish landscape, but also Danish history for Adam had been away on a mission involving the punishment of Queen Caroline Mathlide. The Queen, wife of the insane Christian VII, had an affair with her husband's physican Johann Friedrich Struensee, some time after she gave birth to the heir. The two lovers ruled for a brief period (she has queen, he as prime minster) during which Caroline gave birth to a daughter. They lost power to Christian VII's step-mother. Struensee was execuated, and Caroline was imprisoned in Helsingor (Elisnore) castle, in what is best described as a cell before she was sent into exile in Hanover. She never saw either of her children after her imprisonment. This whole story hangs over Blixen's story and its theme of youth versus age, for the Queen and her lover were more popular than the step-mother, at least with the common people.
What also flows though these stories is the theme of the influence of art and sailoring. There are stories that resemble fairy tales, a Charles Dickens wanders though two of the stories. But there is also a sense of loss, especially in the two stories that deal with children, in particular "The Dreaming Child" and its question of who extactly is dreaming - the child, the wife or the reader? Blixen suffered a miscarriage at one point during her time on her farm (the child was Denys Finch-Hatton's). A reader has to wonder if these stories, written years after her experience expressed in some way her desire for a child. (Is the power of the wives and the weakness of the hubands a comment on her marriage?)
Perhaps it is this question that makes Blixen one of the more honest writers. At times her stories don't seem to be going anywhere, then suddenly, like much in life, something happens, a small event becomes large, something changes and the meaning becomes clear. The stories are small studies in art, the soul, the craft, and love.
It seems strange that when reading Blixen's non-fiction what comes across is her love for her farm in Africa, yet reading her fiction what comes across is her love for Denmark and its history. This dual love is actually reflected in her house, with its Africa interior yet its Danish exterior.
In many ways, too, the stories in this volume remind me of that house. Take for instance, "Sorrow Acre", the story that I always like the most in this volume ("The Cloak" is her best story, at least to me). The story tells of a mother's desperate attempt to save her son, yet juxaposes this with a relationship between the old lord, his wife, and his nephew, Adam. The story not only calls to mind the Danish landscape, but also Danish history for Adam had been away on a mission involving the punishment of Queen Caroline Mathlide. The Queen, wife of the insane Christian VII, had an affair with her husband's physican Johann Friedrich Struensee, some time after she gave birth to the heir. The two lovers ruled for a brief period (she has queen, he as prime minster) during which Caroline gave birth to a daughter. They lost power to Christian VII's step-mother. Struensee was execuated, and Caroline was imprisoned in Helsingor (Elisnore) castle, in what is best described as a cell before she was sent into exile in Hanover. She never saw either of her children after her imprisonment. This whole story hangs over Blixen's story and its theme of youth versus age, for the Queen and her lover were more popular than the step-mother, at least with the common people.
What also flows though these stories is the theme of the influence of art and sailoring. There are stories that resemble fairy tales, a Charles Dickens wanders though two of the stories. But there is also a sense of loss, especially in the two stories that deal with children, in particular "The Dreaming Child" and its question of who extactly is dreaming - the child, the wife or the reader? Blixen suffered a miscarriage at one point during her time on her farm (the child was Denys Finch-Hatton's). A reader has to wonder if these stories, written years after her experience expressed in some way her desire for a child. (Is the power of the wives and the weakness of the hubands a comment on her marriage?)
Perhaps it is this question that makes Blixen one of the more honest writers. At times her stories don't seem to be going anywhere, then suddenly, like much in life, something happens, a small event becomes large, something changes and the meaning becomes clear. The stories are small studies in art, the soul, the craft, and love.
andrius's review against another edition
5.0
Favourites: The Young Man with the Carnation, The Sailor Boy's Tale, The Dreaming Child, Peter and Rosa
efbeckett's review against another edition
5.0
I love to read but I don't understand loving words, the sound of them, the interplay of them. The value of words and reading to me is to share information and ideas. Isak Dinesen makes me start to understand people who love words.
marionlebras's review against another edition
4.0
The Young Man with the Carnation
I particularly appreciated the complexity of the story — short stories imbricated one into the other, adding layers of depth to the atmosphere, not necessarily the characters.
To me, Charlie is a young man who set himself some clearly defined goals: getting out of poverty, marrying a beautiful girl, having his talent recognized. He has strived for it, but now that they have been realized — what else is there for him to look for? Are they all he was expecting from them?
He obviously isn't getting that much happiness from achieving them. Instead, he feels empty, and identifies with the hollow ships, resonating with his hollow mind. A life of privilege made him unable to talk about what is important, and he pressures himself to produce what others expect (another novel about the poor, but it is hard to do so when you are so enstranged from them). However, in the last pages, this "deus ex-machina" intervention from the Lord guarantees that he will have just enough hardship to continue writin — writing is a tortuous process, although feeling empty and inadequate doesn't seem to me like the hardships that get the most inspiration out of someone.
Him telling his stories to the sailors, creating a new narration, felt to me as if he was finding his voice again. For a moment, he was free of all expectations, of the image that is imposed on him by his now peers. It gave him a new freedom of expression.
It is quite ironic that the short story is not called after its protagonist, but after a man he meets for maybe two minutes. However, this young man with the carnation is the symbol of his lost ingenuity and sense of wonder at life, of a time when pleasures were simpler.
Both the main story and the one about Lady Helena are about finding the place you belong in in this world, although Lady Helena is a lot more relentless about it. Charlie does not have the courage to give up his newfound comfort and find his place, he is not strong enough to detach himself from this society based on appearances. On the contrary, the seamen represent this adventure, this detachment from the community, and the ability to make any place your home — as long as they have women and some whiskey.
I particularly appreciated the complexity of the story — short stories imbricated one into the other, adding layers of depth to the atmosphere, not necessarily the characters.
To me, Charlie is a young man who set himself some clearly defined goals: getting out of poverty, marrying a beautiful girl, having his talent recognized. He has strived for it, but now that they have been realized — what else is there for him to look for? Are they all he was expecting from them?
He obviously isn't getting that much happiness from achieving them. Instead, he feels empty, and identifies with the hollow ships, resonating with his hollow mind. A life of privilege made him unable to talk about what is important, and he pressures himself to produce what others expect (another novel about the poor, but it is hard to do so when you are so enstranged from them). However, in the last pages, this "deus ex-machina" intervention from the Lord guarantees that he will have just enough hardship to continue writin — writing is a tortuous process, although feeling empty and inadequate doesn't seem to me like the hardships that get the most inspiration out of someone.
Him telling his stories to the sailors, creating a new narration, felt to me as if he was finding his voice again. For a moment, he was free of all expectations, of the image that is imposed on him by his now peers. It gave him a new freedom of expression.
It is quite ironic that the short story is not called after its protagonist, but after a man he meets for maybe two minutes. However, this young man with the carnation is the symbol of his lost ingenuity and sense of wonder at life, of a time when pleasures were simpler.
Both the main story and the one about Lady Helena are about finding the place you belong in in this world, although Lady Helena is a lot more relentless about it. Charlie does not have the courage to give up his newfound comfort and find his place, he is not strong enough to detach himself from this society based on appearances. On the contrary, the seamen represent this adventure, this detachment from the community, and the ability to make any place your home — as long as they have women and some whiskey.
piccoline's review against another edition
5.0
Shorter tales than the Seven Gothic Tales, but suffused with the same glittery dark mood. These are unlike other works I’ve found, and I’m so grateful they exist.
Highlights are:
Young Man with the Carnation
Sorrow-Acre
The Heroine
The Fish
and especially the swooning, passionate...
Peter and Rosa.
Highlights are:
Young Man with the Carnation
Sorrow-Acre
The Heroine
The Fish
and especially the swooning, passionate...
Peter and Rosa.