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megbklyn's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
_kathill's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
relaxing
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
gooduniverse's review against another edition
5.0
I’m so grateful to Lauren Groff for helping make readers aware of these amazing short stories. I hope more people will read Nancy Hale’s beautifully written and insightful stories. My personal favorites from this book are:
The Double House
Midsummer
To the North
Crimson Autumn
That Woman
Sunday—1913
Outside
A Slow Boat to China
The Double House
Midsummer
To the North
Crimson Autumn
That Woman
Sunday—1913
Outside
A Slow Boat to China
bookalong's review against another edition
5.0
What a stunning collection of short fiction! I truly enjoyed every one. Groff did an excellent job introducing and arranging this collection of 25 stories by the incredible talented late Nancy Hale, a writer who has vastly been forgotten.
•••
In these stories we meet characters that are so utterly human, beautiful and flawed, haunted and real as they try to navigate their contemporary American lives. Even though these were written years ago I found them ever so relevant today. With themes of marriage, motherhood, prejudice, childhood, desire, and more. Hale was an incredibly talented writer. Hale's stories are so astute and intelligently written. And her writing is beautiful and vivid.
•••
I definitely reccomend checking this collection out. Wheather you read a lot of short stories or not. Her writing is too good to pass up. Available September 24th.
•
Thank you to @libraryofamerica for #gifting me this beautiful copy opinions are my own.
•
For more of my book content check out instagram.com/bookalong
•••
In these stories we meet characters that are so utterly human, beautiful and flawed, haunted and real as they try to navigate their contemporary American lives. Even though these were written years ago I found them ever so relevant today. With themes of marriage, motherhood, prejudice, childhood, desire, and more. Hale was an incredibly talented writer. Hale's stories are so astute and intelligently written. And her writing is beautiful and vivid.
•••
I definitely reccomend checking this collection out. Wheather you read a lot of short stories or not. Her writing is too good to pass up. Available September 24th.
•
Thank you to @libraryofamerica for #gifting me this beautiful copy opinions are my own.
•
For more of my book content check out instagram.com/bookalong
e_ramirez_ortega's review against another edition
4.0
I learned about this collection when listening to a podcast episode of Lauren Groff explaining her work on this edition of Nancy Hale's short fiction. I had never heard of Nancy Hale until then. I was intrigued by this elusive writer of the distant past and was eager to read her work. Some tales here are a bit too dull for my taste (Some Day I'll Find You), while others were captivating and haunting: The Earliest Dreams, about a boy listening to adults gathering in the dark, narrated in the second person POV; The Double House, about a boy who loses a deep part of himself; Midsummer, a tale about an adolescent girl's desires, narrated with gorgeous landscape setting; That Woman, a story about a presumed femme fatale; Sunday, a story about marriage and mundane expectations that are too eerie.
Other favorites: On the Beach; The Empress' Ring; The Bubble; Miss August; Outside.
I will say this, after reading Groff's Florida collection of short stories: I can definitely tell some of Hale's stories echo in Florida, particularly, the tales about the mother and her son, out on the beach. I can't quite put my finger on the similarities but it is definitely there, so palpable that I wanted to get the digital copy of Florida and look up some passages from Hale to see the overlap. It was uncanny to read Hale and then immediately say to myself, I've read this before...
Other favorites: On the Beach; The Empress' Ring; The Bubble; Miss August; Outside.
I will say this, after reading Groff's Florida collection of short stories: I can definitely tell some of Hale's stories echo in Florida, particularly, the tales about the mother and her son, out on the beach. I can't quite put my finger on the similarities but it is definitely there, so palpable that I wanted to get the digital copy of Florida and look up some passages from Hale to see the overlap. It was uncanny to read Hale and then immediately say to myself, I've read this before...
ruthie_'s review
challenging
funny
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
jeanetterenee's review against another edition
4.0
This is a collection of twenty-five stories written between 1934 and 1966. Much of their appeal comes from the times in which they were written. Many of them were published in women's magazines, specifically directed toward an audience that preferred stories of a tame, domestic nature. I would recommend this for serious students of the short form, as well as people who enjoy what I call pseudo-nostalgia, fondly longing for an era you never actually experienced. My ratings for the individual stories varied greatly, but Hale's writing is exquisite throughout.
The Earliest Dreams
5 stars
If you aspire to write exquisite descriptive prose about ordinary events, you'll want to study this little gem. It's written in the second person, as if Nancy Hale is talking to the little girl she was in the early 1900s. She's tucked up in bed while her parents are having a dinner party downstairs. She describes the sounds she hears, her perceptions of what's happening downstairs, and the thoughts she has about the animals out in the snowy woods. This one's a four-page masterpiece.
The Double House
3 stars
This is a deftly written but disturbing story about how closely children watch and tune in to the moods of their parents. When things are difficult, they desperately want confirmation that the adults are optimistic and confident. The boy in this story is terrified by his father's despair.
Midsummer
3.5 stars
This is an understated depiction of a spoiled and sheltered sixteen-year-old girl in the throes of her first real infatuation. She, of course, thinks it is love. All of her thoughts and emotions are dramatic and absolute, and she's constantly restless and unsettled by these new sensations. Her inner landscape mirrors the sultry and unyielding New England summer. The fellow in question is beneath her station, and thus ultimately unattainable.
To the North
3 stars
I wondered why Hale chose to write this story. She must have had some connection to Finnish people in the northeastern U.S. This is about a boy who, from infancy, spends his summers on the coast in a place where Finnish people live year round. There is a class divide, and the summer people don't associate with the Finns. Except for Jack. He feels more comfortable with the Finns than with his own people, and spends every moment he can with them every summer.
Crimson Autumn
4 stars
Melissa, a post-debutante young lady, basks in the love of Davis, a popular Harvard football player. He's extremely energetic, what we would today call hyperactive, and he consumes all the oxygen in the room with his exuberance and charisma. Melissa adores him, but he exhausts her. What I found interesting here was the role of the third person in this relationship. Richard is Davis's best friend since childhood. He sort of serves as Davis's unofficial footman and chauffeur and general dogsbody. It never occurs to Melissa, young and foolish as she is, that Richard will someday go off and have a life of his own. She seems to think, consciously or not, that always having Davis will also mean always having Richard. It's the threesome she likes, but I don't think she recognizes the dynamic among the three of them. Richard is the presence that calms and balances Davis, sometimes seemingly there and not there at the same time. When Richard moves on, that role will shift to Melissa, and I doubt she's up to it.
That Woman
3.5 stars
This story highlights the parochialism of the American South in the early to mid-twentieth century. A Yankee woman moves to a southern town where available men are in demand. She befriends a woman who has been shunned by other women in town. Outcast for the offense of having had too many husbands. As if she has hogged up more than her fair share of a scarce resource.
A Place to Hide
3 stars
This is more a vignette than a story, and seems to be autobiographical. It describes visits to someone named Uncle Paul who grows his own food and knits washcloths for soldiers. This one shows its age in its reference to "the World War". It was written in 1940, so the Second World War had not yet been designated as such. "The World War" was the one from 1914 to 1918.
Book Review
4 stars
This one was appealing to me because it incorporates real events that were contemporary at the time the story was written (1941). The story is set at a dinner table where a discussion begins about Hemingway's latest novel. (Not mentioned by name, but it is clearly For Whom the Bell Tolls.) A heated argument ensues about the Spanish Civil War, Franco, Communists and Fascists.There is a character who is said to be based on H.L. Mencken. Said character is described as having "a brown face, like a monkey, with broad thick lips, and thick hair parted in the middle." So yeah, I can see the possibility: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._L._Mencken
I liked the way the woman in the discussion did not back down. She stood up for her viewpoint right on through to the end.
Those Are as Brothers
4 stars
There are a couple of things going on here. There is Mrs. Mason, a recently divorced woman with two children. She is plagued by fear caused by whatever happened with her ex-husband. She feels she can never really relax or learn to trust again. "Nobody could help, because nobody could possibly understand the irrationality, the uncontrollability, of fear when it was like this, in the blood."
The second thread of the story involves two German refugees, one a Jew, and one not. The story was written in 1941, and it's interesting to see how contemporaneous events associated with WWII were incorporated. The U.S. had not yet entered the war when Hale wrote this story.
The Marching Feet
4 stars
The casual conversation in this piece may be appalling to readers in 2019, but I think it was appalling to Nancy Hale in 1941. She seems to have had a beef with the parochialism and prejudice of people in the Southern U.S. It seems the purpose of this very short piece is to show how southern women spoke so disparagingly about black people and Jews, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to talk about human beings that way. When an actual Jewish woman enters the picture, they condescend to her, and seem to trivialize what the Jewish people in Europe were enduring at the time.
Sunday--1913
2 stars
I didn't care for this one. I felt agitated while reading it, and only finished it for the sake of completeness. It's about Laura, a young newlywed girl with burning pains in her feet that may or may not be psychosomatic. The story describes an entire Sunday, beginning from when she wakes up.Dressing for church, having breakfast, going to church. It describes the complete church service as well as the features of the interior of the church. And so on through lunch and going up for a nap.Throughout this recitation of the entire day, we are treated to Laura's thoughts and insecurities about how she needs to be a good and grateful wife, which turns out to be a real strain on her emotionally.
Who Lived and Died Believing
2.5
This is another one I didn't care for and finished just for the sake of completeness. It's about a woman in a hospital and the nurse who cares for her. It appears to be a mental hospital rather than a general hospital. I dislike getting inside the minds of people who are unstable, and I'm not fond of hospitals, so this was not a good fit for me. There were two separate paragraphs in the story that I really liked, and of course neither of them were about the hospital. One is a perfect evocation of a drugstore with a soda fountain. I could feel what it would have been like in 1942, when the story was written. The other paragraph is about a drive the nurse takes with her boyfriend out into the country on a hot night, describing the varying strengths of the smell of honeysuckle. I'm discovering this is what I enjoy about Hale's writing. She can summon a scene with just a few simple sentences and make you see and feel it.
Someday I'll Find You...
3 stars
There's not much to this story plottily speaking. Mr. Burns is a Hollywood writer who is in a desert sanatorium, but has recovered enough that he should go home. He's enjoying himself too much there, and doesn't want to leave. In town one afternoon he encounters an old lover, and they sit in a bar and hash over old times and what has become of them since they last saw each other. The dialogue between these two really felt like a movie scene to me. I could picture it in a film, if you had the right actors from the 1940s giving it the proper dramatic effect.
On the Beach
3 stars
A woman takes her son to the beach on a beautiful day. She has trouble relaxing because she can't stop thinking about the H-Bomb and how it would annihilate the world. A timely topic when the story was written in 1952. The hydrogen bomb seemed very threatening in that era, in a way no previous threat could match.
Inside
4 stars
This is an odd little short piece, but it struck my fancy. It's only about four pages, and seems to come from the author's lived experience. It describes a road trip from New England to Virginia, explaining the things she doesn't like about superhighways. She dislikes the impersonal nature of them, the speed, and especially the noise. I thought it was cute the way she told exactly how much she paid for everything--cigarettes, motel room, hamburger, ice cream cone, chicken dinner. Those 1953 prices look good to me!
The Empress's Ring
4 stars
I enjoyed the nostalgic charm of this piece. This is another one that seems to be an autobiographical vignette rather than a piece of fiction. She tells about when she was a girl and her aunt gave her a ring that had once belonged to an Austrian empress. She lost the ring in a sand pile, and even as an adult she never quite got over the loss. I loved the description of her makeshift playhouse that used to be the milk room of a dairy farm, and how she longed for a miniature tea set with rosebuds, like the neighbor girl had.
The Bubble
3 stars
I couldn't quite figure out what was the point of this story, except maybe something about time and the way it rushes on. A young woman has a baby, and for a brief period she feels like time is moving backward. She wishes she could figure out how to make that happen again. I think. Hmmph.
Miss August
2 stars
Nancy Hale was a bit fixated on mental hospitals and sanatoria. This one takes place in a sanatorium where a new nurse named Miss August has arrived. Miss August wants to go to India and start an ashram. The patients don't like her because she is German and because she's not a pleasant person. Eventually there is a confrontation. This one didn't do anything for me. Pfffft.
How Would You Like to Be Born...
3 stars
Florrie is an old lady who is all alone in the world now that her bossy sister has died. They were from an upper class family, but all the money seems to be gone. Florrie wants so much for the working class people to like her, but they mock her posh accent and mannerisms. She finally learns what it feels like to be vulnerable, and develops a little compassion for those born into unfortunate circumstances.
Outside
4 stars
Nancy Hale seemed to be aiming this story at a certain class of uppity "arty" people who think they're superior to what they call "normal" people. They invite a few "normal" (read: inferior) people to their parties, apparently just to appear magnanimous. What elevated this story for me was the way she described things the young girl, Phoebe, is seeing around her, as if she is learning to see as an artist does. The vivid, painterly writing is quite lovely.
A Slow Boat to China
4 stars
This is a poignant (but not maudlin) story about a woman dropping off her son for his last year of boarding school. She's brisk and efficient, an old hand at this process, no lingering, no tears. She contrasts herself with the nervous and emotional mothers of the new boys, and she's quite self-congratulatory. But on the drive home, she remembers a specific day when her son was much younger, and the tears flow. She realizes she's more sentimental than she thought, and it does her good to let herself feel that tug of loss from leaving her son.
Flotsam
4.5 stars
This is a tender story about a little boy who spends the day with his grandmother because his mother has to take care of divorce papers. They window shop, talk about why his parents are divorcing, and then grandmother gets nostalgic and tells about her younger days with grandfather. They end up having an unplanned little adventure. All very sweet and charming, but never treacly.
Rich People
5 stars
I gave this one five stars because it felt like a novel in miniature form. In the space of about 20 pages, you get the full arc of a disappointed woman's life. This young woman grows up in a family that is dedicated to austerity and healthful practices. They're sort of what we would have called "granolas" back a few years ago. Her parents scotch the one opportunity she might have to marry a very wealthy man. It seems, though, that it might be just as much her fault as theirs, due to her pride and impulsivity. The story was written in 1960, but the woman is looking back in time to the 1920s or 1930s. Hale includes some of the abbreviations that were used in that era, which I found entertaining. Girls who didn't get a husband after their coming out were called L.O.P.H., meaning a Left On Papa's Handser.
Sunday Lunch
3.5 stars
All of the main characters in this story are irritating (yes, even the clergyman). But there's a clever dynamic playing out among them, and Hale orchestrates it well. We have the clergyman, Mr. Watson, who has decided he is going to practice "being all things to all men." His manner of doing so makes him feel almost clairvoyant. It's as if he can tune in and actually be the person he is talking to or observing, and then perceive something that is going to happen to them. He watches the interplay and sneaky resentment between Mrs. Beneker and her son Alec. He gets a vision of them in a certain future situation, which turns out to closely resemble a secret Mrs. Beneker thinks she has kept from her son.
The Most Elegant Drawing Room in Europe
4 stars
Two women, Emily and Persis, are on holiday in Venice, with Emily's crabby mother. Emily writes gushingly to a friend back in the U.S. about how glamorous and lovely everything is. They sashay around town with the Countess, and are swept up in the magic of it all. Then they discover that the Countess is not quite as gracious as she appears, and the vacation loses some of its sparkle.
This story was written in 1966, and I thought it was funny that Emily and Persis think of themselves as "old maids" when they're only in their late thirties.
The Earliest Dreams
5 stars
If you aspire to write exquisite descriptive prose about ordinary events, you'll want to study this little gem. It's written in the second person, as if Nancy Hale is talking to the little girl she was in the early 1900s. She's tucked up in bed while her parents are having a dinner party downstairs. She describes the sounds she hears, her perceptions of what's happening downstairs, and the thoughts she has about the animals out in the snowy woods. This one's a four-page masterpiece.
The Double House
3 stars
This is a deftly written but disturbing story about how closely children watch and tune in to the moods of their parents. When things are difficult, they desperately want confirmation that the adults are optimistic and confident. The boy in this story is terrified by his father's despair.
Midsummer
3.5 stars
This is an understated depiction of a spoiled and sheltered sixteen-year-old girl in the throes of her first real infatuation. She, of course, thinks it is love. All of her thoughts and emotions are dramatic and absolute, and she's constantly restless and unsettled by these new sensations. Her inner landscape mirrors the sultry and unyielding New England summer. The fellow in question is beneath her station, and thus ultimately unattainable.
To the North
3 stars
I wondered why Hale chose to write this story. She must have had some connection to Finnish people in the northeastern U.S. This is about a boy who, from infancy, spends his summers on the coast in a place where Finnish people live year round. There is a class divide, and the summer people don't associate with the Finns. Except for Jack. He feels more comfortable with the Finns than with his own people, and spends every moment he can with them every summer.
Crimson Autumn
4 stars
Melissa, a post-debutante young lady, basks in the love of Davis, a popular Harvard football player. He's extremely energetic, what we would today call hyperactive, and he consumes all the oxygen in the room with his exuberance and charisma. Melissa adores him, but he exhausts her. What I found interesting here was the role of the third person in this relationship. Richard is Davis's best friend since childhood. He sort of serves as Davis's unofficial footman and chauffeur and general dogsbody. It never occurs to Melissa, young and foolish as she is, that Richard will someday go off and have a life of his own. She seems to think, consciously or not, that always having Davis will also mean always having Richard. It's the threesome she likes, but I don't think she recognizes the dynamic among the three of them. Richard is the presence that calms and balances Davis, sometimes seemingly there and not there at the same time. When Richard moves on, that role will shift to Melissa, and I doubt she's up to it.
That Woman
3.5 stars
This story highlights the parochialism of the American South in the early to mid-twentieth century. A Yankee woman moves to a southern town where available men are in demand. She befriends a woman who has been shunned by other women in town. Outcast for the offense of having had too many husbands. As if she has hogged up more than her fair share of a scarce resource.
A Place to Hide
3 stars
This is more a vignette than a story, and seems to be autobiographical. It describes visits to someone named Uncle Paul who grows his own food and knits washcloths for soldiers. This one shows its age in its reference to "the World War". It was written in 1940, so the Second World War had not yet been designated as such. "The World War" was the one from 1914 to 1918.
Book Review
4 stars
This one was appealing to me because it incorporates real events that were contemporary at the time the story was written (1941). The story is set at a dinner table where a discussion begins about Hemingway's latest novel. (Not mentioned by name, but it is clearly For Whom the Bell Tolls.) A heated argument ensues about the Spanish Civil War, Franco, Communists and Fascists.There is a character who is said to be based on H.L. Mencken. Said character is described as having "a brown face, like a monkey, with broad thick lips, and thick hair parted in the middle." So yeah, I can see the possibility: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._L._Mencken
I liked the way the woman in the discussion did not back down. She stood up for her viewpoint right on through to the end.
Those Are as Brothers
4 stars
There are a couple of things going on here. There is Mrs. Mason, a recently divorced woman with two children. She is plagued by fear caused by whatever happened with her ex-husband. She feels she can never really relax or learn to trust again. "Nobody could help, because nobody could possibly understand the irrationality, the uncontrollability, of fear when it was like this, in the blood."
The second thread of the story involves two German refugees, one a Jew, and one not. The story was written in 1941, and it's interesting to see how contemporaneous events associated with WWII were incorporated. The U.S. had not yet entered the war when Hale wrote this story.
The Marching Feet
4 stars
The casual conversation in this piece may be appalling to readers in 2019, but I think it was appalling to Nancy Hale in 1941. She seems to have had a beef with the parochialism and prejudice of people in the Southern U.S. It seems the purpose of this very short piece is to show how southern women spoke so disparagingly about black people and Jews, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to talk about human beings that way. When an actual Jewish woman enters the picture, they condescend to her, and seem to trivialize what the Jewish people in Europe were enduring at the time.
Sunday--1913
2 stars
I didn't care for this one. I felt agitated while reading it, and only finished it for the sake of completeness. It's about Laura, a young newlywed girl with burning pains in her feet that may or may not be psychosomatic. The story describes an entire Sunday, beginning from when she wakes up.Dressing for church, having breakfast, going to church. It describes the complete church service as well as the features of the interior of the church. And so on through lunch and going up for a nap.Throughout this recitation of the entire day, we are treated to Laura's thoughts and insecurities about how she needs to be a good and grateful wife, which turns out to be a real strain on her emotionally.
Who Lived and Died Believing
2.5
This is another one I didn't care for and finished just for the sake of completeness. It's about a woman in a hospital and the nurse who cares for her. It appears to be a mental hospital rather than a general hospital. I dislike getting inside the minds of people who are unstable, and I'm not fond of hospitals, so this was not a good fit for me. There were two separate paragraphs in the story that I really liked, and of course neither of them were about the hospital. One is a perfect evocation of a drugstore with a soda fountain. I could feel what it would have been like in 1942, when the story was written. The other paragraph is about a drive the nurse takes with her boyfriend out into the country on a hot night, describing the varying strengths of the smell of honeysuckle. I'm discovering this is what I enjoy about Hale's writing. She can summon a scene with just a few simple sentences and make you see and feel it.
Someday I'll Find You...
3 stars
There's not much to this story plottily speaking. Mr. Burns is a Hollywood writer who is in a desert sanatorium, but has recovered enough that he should go home. He's enjoying himself too much there, and doesn't want to leave. In town one afternoon he encounters an old lover, and they sit in a bar and hash over old times and what has become of them since they last saw each other. The dialogue between these two really felt like a movie scene to me. I could picture it in a film, if you had the right actors from the 1940s giving it the proper dramatic effect.
On the Beach
3 stars
A woman takes her son to the beach on a beautiful day. She has trouble relaxing because she can't stop thinking about the H-Bomb and how it would annihilate the world. A timely topic when the story was written in 1952. The hydrogen bomb seemed very threatening in that era, in a way no previous threat could match.
Inside
4 stars
This is an odd little short piece, but it struck my fancy. It's only about four pages, and seems to come from the author's lived experience. It describes a road trip from New England to Virginia, explaining the things she doesn't like about superhighways. She dislikes the impersonal nature of them, the speed, and especially the noise. I thought it was cute the way she told exactly how much she paid for everything--cigarettes, motel room, hamburger, ice cream cone, chicken dinner. Those 1953 prices look good to me!
The Empress's Ring
4 stars
I enjoyed the nostalgic charm of this piece. This is another one that seems to be an autobiographical vignette rather than a piece of fiction. She tells about when she was a girl and her aunt gave her a ring that had once belonged to an Austrian empress. She lost the ring in a sand pile, and even as an adult she never quite got over the loss. I loved the description of her makeshift playhouse that used to be the milk room of a dairy farm, and how she longed for a miniature tea set with rosebuds, like the neighbor girl had.
The Bubble
3 stars
I couldn't quite figure out what was the point of this story, except maybe something about time and the way it rushes on. A young woman has a baby, and for a brief period she feels like time is moving backward. She wishes she could figure out how to make that happen again. I think. Hmmph.
Miss August
2 stars
Nancy Hale was a bit fixated on mental hospitals and sanatoria. This one takes place in a sanatorium where a new nurse named Miss August has arrived. Miss August wants to go to India and start an ashram. The patients don't like her because she is German and because she's not a pleasant person. Eventually there is a confrontation. This one didn't do anything for me. Pfffft.
How Would You Like to Be Born...
3 stars
Florrie is an old lady who is all alone in the world now that her bossy sister has died. They were from an upper class family, but all the money seems to be gone. Florrie wants so much for the working class people to like her, but they mock her posh accent and mannerisms. She finally learns what it feels like to be vulnerable, and develops a little compassion for those born into unfortunate circumstances.
Outside
4 stars
Nancy Hale seemed to be aiming this story at a certain class of uppity "arty" people who think they're superior to what they call "normal" people. They invite a few "normal" (read: inferior) people to their parties, apparently just to appear magnanimous. What elevated this story for me was the way she described things the young girl, Phoebe, is seeing around her, as if she is learning to see as an artist does. The vivid, painterly writing is quite lovely.
A Slow Boat to China
4 stars
This is a poignant (but not maudlin) story about a woman dropping off her son for his last year of boarding school. She's brisk and efficient, an old hand at this process, no lingering, no tears. She contrasts herself with the nervous and emotional mothers of the new boys, and she's quite self-congratulatory. But on the drive home, she remembers a specific day when her son was much younger, and the tears flow. She realizes she's more sentimental than she thought, and it does her good to let herself feel that tug of loss from leaving her son.
Flotsam
4.5 stars
This is a tender story about a little boy who spends the day with his grandmother because his mother has to take care of divorce papers. They window shop, talk about why his parents are divorcing, and then grandmother gets nostalgic and tells about her younger days with grandfather. They end up having an unplanned little adventure. All very sweet and charming, but never treacly.
Rich People
5 stars
I gave this one five stars because it felt like a novel in miniature form. In the space of about 20 pages, you get the full arc of a disappointed woman's life. This young woman grows up in a family that is dedicated to austerity and healthful practices. They're sort of what we would have called "granolas" back a few years ago. Her parents scotch the one opportunity she might have to marry a very wealthy man. It seems, though, that it might be just as much her fault as theirs, due to her pride and impulsivity. The story was written in 1960, but the woman is looking back in time to the 1920s or 1930s. Hale includes some of the abbreviations that were used in that era, which I found entertaining. Girls who didn't get a husband after their coming out were called L.O.P.H., meaning a Left On Papa's Handser.
Sunday Lunch
3.5 stars
All of the main characters in this story are irritating (yes, even the clergyman). But there's a clever dynamic playing out among them, and Hale orchestrates it well. We have the clergyman, Mr. Watson, who has decided he is going to practice "being all things to all men." His manner of doing so makes him feel almost clairvoyant. It's as if he can tune in and actually be the person he is talking to or observing, and then perceive something that is going to happen to them. He watches the interplay and sneaky resentment between Mrs. Beneker and her son Alec. He gets a vision of them in a certain future situation, which turns out to closely resemble a secret Mrs. Beneker thinks she has kept from her son.
The Most Elegant Drawing Room in Europe
4 stars
Two women, Emily and Persis, are on holiday in Venice, with Emily's crabby mother. Emily writes gushingly to a friend back in the U.S. about how glamorous and lovely everything is. They sashay around town with the Countess, and are swept up in the magic of it all. Then they discover that the Countess is not quite as gracious as she appears, and the vacation loses some of its sparkle.
This story was written in 1966, and I thought it was funny that Emily and Persis think of themselves as "old maids" when they're only in their late thirties.
kfor24's review
5.0
In some ways, this could have been written today, and in other ways, it was a stark reminder of how far we've come. It was both shocking and sobering to note the number of times "the Irish help" was mentioned in these stories, which span the 1930s through 1960s, and a reminder that there is always some group (in those days, it was mine) on whose backs other people are standing.
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