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3.6 AVERAGE
3.6 AVERAGE
This was surprisingly satisfying. Considering it was written in the 40s, set mostly in the 19th century, and written in English by a Danish author, I found the stories pulled me in and the language sped me along.
These stories can best be described as fairy tales without the magical aspect. Really, Cinderella is a very interesting story without the fairy godmother, pumpkins and mice. And it turns out that Cinderella had better find a prince because a merely well-off upper middle class nouveau riche would not be able to keep her happy.
I definitely recommend to Sue T, Jessica (when she is looking for something more mainstream) and maybe Emma.
These stories can best be described as fairy tales without the magical aspect. Really, Cinderella is a very interesting story without the fairy godmother, pumpkins and mice. And it turns out that Cinderella had better find a prince because a merely well-off upper middle class nouveau riche would not be able to keep her happy.
I definitely recommend to Sue T, Jessica (when she is looking for something more mainstream) and maybe Emma.
This was a collection of short stories, some with fantasy elements, some with a bit of romance, but all having the same sort of wistful feel to them. All the characters seem to be dissatisfied with life. Some of the stories are resolved, some are not.
I had a hard time reading these stories. They didn't seem to have a definite theme, and even the plots were hard to describe. My favorite story was "The Heroine."
I had a hard time reading these stories. They didn't seem to have a definite theme, and even the plots were hard to describe. My favorite story was "The Heroine."
challenging
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
‘’You have drunk with Sunniva now,’’ she said. ‘’You have drunk down a little wisdom, so that in the future all your thoughts shall not fall like raindrops into the salt sea.’’
The Sailor - Boy’s Tale: A sailor-boy meets a strange falcon, kisses a girl and kills a man for love. A mystical tale of a boy reaching manhood.
The Young Man with the Carnation: A young writer in search of inspiration comes across a company of sailors whose tale of a woman’s search for the perfect Blue opens his eyes and understands that his wife is his Muse.
The Pearls: A pearl becomes a metaphor for the wonder, insecurity and fragility of marriage.
The Invincible Slave-Owners: The sorrows of young love through misunderstandings and secrecy.
The Heroine: A myseterious woman becomes the symbol of pride, resilience and dignity as the Franco-Prussian war unfolds…
The Dreaming Child: Life brings a lonely woman and an abandoned child together in a story that starts as a Dickensian tale that turns rather eerie until its powerful closure.
Alkmene: The arrival of a young girl in a parsonage turns the household upside down and seals the fate of a boy who desperately searches for affection.
The Fish: King Erik of Denmark muses on Religion and the unattainable, seeing himself as the old Wanderer without knowing that he is soon to meet his end at the hands of a jealous husband. A haunting story for a midsummer’s night that reminded me of Oscar Wilde’s tales.
Peter and Rosa: The wind and the North Sea become the scenery of a young couple’s star-crossed love.
‘’The low, undulating Danish landscape was silent and serene, mysteriously wide-awake, in the hour before sunrise. There was not a cloud in the pale sky, not a shadow along the dim, pearly fields, hills and woods. The mist was lifting from the valleys and hollows, the air was cool, the grass and the foliage dripping wet with morning dew. Unwatched by the eyes of man, and undisturbed bu his activity, the country breathed a timeless life, to which language was inadequate.’’
Sorrow-Acre: A lyrical ode to the nature, history and legends of Denmark, told through the bitter story of a woman and her son.
A Consolatory Tale: This story could have been narrated by Scheherazade to the ones who long to open the caskets of Life and Death…
Blixen’s characters search for love, for a place to belong, for the great unknown. The seam the wind, the Northern land, the mysticism and lyricism echo through her hauntingly unique writer. Although much more earthly than her Seven Gothic Tales, this collection is a fable for daily life and the proof that the physical and the spiritual are one.
‘’I have now reconciled the heart of man with the conditions of the earth. I have persecuted, I have shown him how to get himself spat upon and scourged, I have taught him how to get himself hung upon a cross. I have given to man that solution of his riddle, that he begged of me, I have consigned to him his salvation.’’
My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/
I actually read the danish version of this collection.
Blixen was pretty brilliant - the tone in these, and all of the layers in these stories(!)
Blixen was pretty brilliant - the tone in these, and all of the layers in these stories(!)
Like many Americans (I suspect), my introduction to Isak Dinesen was via the film version of Out of Africa. I actually never saw it until an adult, but my mother bought the film tie-in copy of Out of Africa and Shadows On the Grass which I read cover to cover two or three times in high school -- and my Dinesen obsession was born.
This collection of eleven short stories has the feel of a 19th-century fairy tale collection; while reading, I found myself musing if these stories were the ones Karen recounted to Denys while they were in Kenya. Some were pure magic while others were meditations on religion, family, or obligation. There were delightful passages in every story, wryly funny and very true, such as:
For those who are new to Dinesen, this is an excellent introduction as she is a writer of more than just memoir; those who have read Out of Africa have gotten a taste of the dreamy, meditative way she tackles life, and these stories are an extension of that.
This collection of eleven short stories has the feel of a 19th-century fairy tale collection; while reading, I found myself musing if these stories were the ones Karen recounted to Denys while they were in Kenya. Some were pure magic while others were meditations on religion, family, or obligation. There were delightful passages in every story, wryly funny and very true, such as:
"Jensine would never have married a man whom she did not love; she held the god of love in great respect, and had already for some years sent a little daily prayer to him: "Why doest thou tarry?" But now she reflected that he had perhaps granted her prayer with vengeance, and that her books had given her but little information as to the real nature of love." (page 109, from "The Pearls")
For those who are new to Dinesen, this is an excellent introduction as she is a writer of more than just memoir; those who have read Out of Africa have gotten a taste of the dreamy, meditative way she tackles life, and these stories are an extension of that.
challenging
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
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.
challenging
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
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.