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mattbeatty's review against another edition
5.0
Loved this, loved this. So glad my brother Joe introduced me to Thomas. His storywriting style is fantastic, very inspiring. His sentences and structure never cease to amaze me, his descriptions and ability to put to paper certain scenarios/feelings that are difficult to capture (e.g. a nightly progression into a barely-remembered drunken stupor).
My favorite was "One Warm Saturday"--amazing. Also "Plenty of Furniture," "The Followers," "The Peaches," all of them.
My favorite was "One Warm Saturday"--amazing. Also "Plenty of Furniture," "The Followers," "The Peaches," all of them.
jzelman's review
funny
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
lonesomelovee's review
2.0
only really liked "a school for witches." Dylan Thomas for sure has a unique style, but it's not necessarily for me.
samanthaleereads's review
5.0
This is one of the best, if not the best short story collection I’ve ever read. Dylan Thomas is so skilled at setting the scene in a way that is vivid, poetic, and awe inspiring. Both my amazement and my envy of his literary abilities increased with every word I read.
I also appreciated the varied lengths of his stories. One of my favourites, “The School for Witches” was only a few pages long, but no less effective than the longest story of the eight. His descriptions were so curious and unique, but so clear at the same time. He didn’t simply lay out the setting, events, and characters of each story, he used words to construct an almost palpable atmosphere. You can see this in all of his stories as he describes rainy late night streets and bars.
I also loved “Plenty of Furniture” because of its strange almost surreal quality.
The following are some of my favourite quotes/ passages from the book:
"The day was beautiful. Clouds sailed on the sky. There was a warm sun."
"I thought that I had been walking long, damp passages all my life, and climbing stairs in the dark, alone."
"I cupped a match to let them see my face in a dramatic shadow, my eyes mysteriously sunk, perhaps, in a startling white face, my young looks savage in the sudden flicker of light, to make them wonder who I was as I puffed my last butt and puzzled about them. Why was the soft-faced young man, with his tame devil’s eyebrows, standing like a stone figure with a glow-worm in it? He should have a nice girl to bully him gently and take him to cry in the pictures, or kids to bounce around in a kitchen on Rodney street."
"I was a lonely nightwalker and a steady stander-at-corners. I liked to walk through the wet town after midnight, when the streets were deserted and the window lights out, alone and alive on the glistening tramlines in dead and empty HIgh Street under the moon, gigantically sad in the damp streets by ghostly Ebenezer Chapel. And I never felt more a part of the remote and overpressing world, or more full of love and arrogance and pity and humility, not for myself alone, but for the living earth I suffered on..."
"I wore my cigarette as he did, a hanging badge of bad habits."
"...and all the time I thought of the paragraphs I would never write. I’ll put you all in a story by and by."
"I liked the taste of beer, its live, white lather, its brass-bright depths, the sudden world through the wet brown walls of the glass, the titled rush to the lips and the slow swallowing down to the lapping belly, the salt on the tongue, the foam at the corners."
"Unashamed and uncertain, he smiled at her; and, though he was prepared for all, her answering smile made his fingers tremble again, as they had in the Gardens, and reddened his cheeks and drove his heart to a gallop."
"We both sighed.
‘Oh, for our vanished youth,’ I said."
I also appreciated the varied lengths of his stories. One of my favourites, “The School for Witches” was only a few pages long, but no less effective than the longest story of the eight. His descriptions were so curious and unique, but so clear at the same time. He didn’t simply lay out the setting, events, and characters of each story, he used words to construct an almost palpable atmosphere. You can see this in all of his stories as he describes rainy late night streets and bars.
I also loved “Plenty of Furniture” because of its strange almost surreal quality.
The following are some of my favourite quotes/ passages from the book:
"The day was beautiful. Clouds sailed on the sky. There was a warm sun."
"I thought that I had been walking long, damp passages all my life, and climbing stairs in the dark, alone."
"I cupped a match to let them see my face in a dramatic shadow, my eyes mysteriously sunk, perhaps, in a startling white face, my young looks savage in the sudden flicker of light, to make them wonder who I was as I puffed my last butt and puzzled about them. Why was the soft-faced young man, with his tame devil’s eyebrows, standing like a stone figure with a glow-worm in it? He should have a nice girl to bully him gently and take him to cry in the pictures, or kids to bounce around in a kitchen on Rodney street."
"I was a lonely nightwalker and a steady stander-at-corners. I liked to walk through the wet town after midnight, when the streets were deserted and the window lights out, alone and alive on the glistening tramlines in dead and empty HIgh Street under the moon, gigantically sad in the damp streets by ghostly Ebenezer Chapel. And I never felt more a part of the remote and overpressing world, or more full of love and arrogance and pity and humility, not for myself alone, but for the living earth I suffered on..."
"I wore my cigarette as he did, a hanging badge of bad habits."
"...and all the time I thought of the paragraphs I would never write. I’ll put you all in a story by and by."
"I liked the taste of beer, its live, white lather, its brass-bright depths, the sudden world through the wet brown walls of the glass, the titled rush to the lips and the slow swallowing down to the lapping belly, the salt on the tongue, the foam at the corners."
"Unashamed and uncertain, he smiled at her; and, though he was prepared for all, her answering smile made his fingers tremble again, as they had in the Gardens, and reddened his cheeks and drove his heart to a gallop."
"We both sighed.
‘Oh, for our vanished youth,’ I said."
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