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A review by rachelm31f6b
Tell Me a Riddle by Tillie Olsen
3.0
This book was good but I felt a great heaviness reading many of these stories.(It's a compilation of 4 short stories). The last story (the title story) I had to put down many times in the beginning, it did redeem itself in the end and I was able to enjoy it. Thank goodness because otherwise it would have left a bad taste in my mouth.
Um..spoilers I guess?
"After him she sobbed curses he had not heard in years, old-country curses from their childhood: Grow, oh shall you grow like an onion, with your head in the ground. Like the hide of a drum shall you be, beaten in life, beaten in death. Oh shall you be like a chandelier, to hang, and to burn..."(74).
"...not Davy, but he is already here, having to die again with her this time, for the living take their dead with them when they die"(108).
"Escaped to the grandchildren whose childhoods were childish, who had never hungered, who live unravaged by disease in warm houses of many rooms, had all the school for which they cared, could walk on any street, stood a head taller than their grandparents, towered above-beautiful skins, straight backs, clear straightforward eyes. 'Yes, you in Olshana,' he said to the town of sixty years ago, 'they would seem nobility to you'(112).
"The world of their youth-dark ignorant, terrible with hate and disease- how was it that living in it, in the midst of corruption, filth, treachery, degradation, they had not mistrusted man nor themselves; had believed so beautifully, so...falsely?"(113).
Um..spoilers I guess?
"After him she sobbed curses he had not heard in years, old-country curses from their childhood: Grow, oh shall you grow like an onion, with your head in the ground. Like the hide of a drum shall you be, beaten in life, beaten in death. Oh shall you be like a chandelier, to hang, and to burn..."(74).
"...not Davy, but he is already here, having to die again with her this time, for the living take their dead with them when they die"(108).
"Escaped to the grandchildren whose childhoods were childish, who had never hungered, who live unravaged by disease in warm houses of many rooms, had all the school for which they cared, could walk on any street, stood a head taller than their grandparents, towered above-beautiful skins, straight backs, clear straightforward eyes. 'Yes, you in Olshana,' he said to the town of sixty years ago, 'they would seem nobility to you'(112).
"The world of their youth-dark ignorant, terrible with hate and disease- how was it that living in it, in the midst of corruption, filth, treachery, degradation, they had not mistrusted man nor themselves; had believed so beautifully, so...falsely?"(113).