Short Stories Books - Page 10

Driftless

David Rhodes

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

David Rhodes's long-awaited new novel turns an unblinking eye on an array of eccentric characters and situations. The setting is Words, Wisconsin, an anonymous town of only a few hundred people. But under its sleepy surface, life rages. Cora and Graham guard their dairy farm, and family, from the wicked schemes of their milk co-op. Lifelong paraplegic Olivia suddenly starts to walk, only to find herself crippled by her fury toward her sister and caretaker, Violet. Recently retired Rusty finds a cougar living in his haymow, dredging up haunting childhood memories. Winifred becomes pastor of the Friends church and stumbles on enlightenment in a very unlikely place. And Julia Montgomery, both private and gregarious, instigates a series of events that threatens the town's solitude and doggedly suspicious ways. Driftless finds the author's powers undiminished in this unforgettable story that evokes a small-town America previously unmapped, and the damaged denizens who must make their way through it.

A River Runs Through It

Norman Maclean

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 121 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

From its first magnificent sentence, "In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing", to the last, "I am haunted by waters", A River Runs Through It is an American classic.

Based on Norman Maclean's childhood experiences, the title novella has established itself as one of the most moving stories of our time; it captivates readers with vivid descriptions of life along Montana's Big Blackfoot River and its near magical blend of fly fishing with the troubling affections of the heart.

The paperback edition is now available with an evocative new cover by acclaimed Montana painter Russell Chatham.

"A masterpiece. . . . This is more than stunning fiction: It is a lyric record of a time and a life, shining with Maclean's special gift for calling the reader's attention to arts of all kinds—the arts that work in nature, in personality, in social intercourse, in fly-fishing."—Kenneth M. Pierce, Village Voice

Norman Maclean (1902-90), woodsman, scholar, teacher, and storyteller, grew up in the Western Rocky Mountains of Montana and worked for many years in logging camps and for the United States Forestry Service before beginning his academic career. He retired from the University of Chicago in 1973.

One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (theater tie-in)

Ken Kesey

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 361 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

One Flew East, One Flew West 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest' is easily one of the greatest novels ever written. Chief Bromden is, by far, the most humanizing narrator I've ever read. Though this novel is an unyielding social criticism, it's also a very effective one in that it forces the reader to empathize with confined characters while realizing the authoritarians' actions - particularly those of Nurse Ratched - seem even more villainous due to the demoralization which is felt when one is corrected or otherwise censored without being capable of understanding what it is they've done to deserve such.

A beautifully written and timeless novel.

Must Have 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This book is a very good read. You feel as though you are truly experiencing the hospital through the eyes of the chief and it is refreshing to be in the third person from all the action. Found the book to be extremely refreshing.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Multiple people told me before I read this book and while I was reading it that it's a great book and one of the best they've ever read. With only twenty pages left, I agree that it is a well written and very interesting. I would recommend it to almost anyone that is looking for something different to read.
I didn't have any idea what this book was about before I started reading it. About halfway through the book, I could almost say the same thing, I wouldn't be able to summarize what had happened at that point. This book is not hard to read or understand, but in the beginning not very much happens. Mostly beginning introduces us to the characters and allows the reader to get to know them, and it also describes the setting, which is a mental institution. The characters are all well defined and unique; they're very interesting to read about.
Ken Kesey writes in a descriptive way, but not to the point that it's boring. Actually this book isn't boring at all; it's the type of book that keeps you turning the pages. For most people, the situations and characters aren't familiar at all, and it's hard not to become intrigued. Of all the classic books that I have read, this is by far the best one.

Editorial Review:

An inmate of a mental institution tries to find the freedom and independence denied him in the outside world.

Nine Stories

J.D. Salinger

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 158 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Salinger Hits Nine Home Runs. 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Published after The Catcher in the Rye (1951), Nine Stories is quintessential Salinger. Having first read Salinger's collection of Nine Stories as a college student, these short stories have remained in my thoughts for years.

"A Perfect Day for Bananafish" (first published in the The New Yorker, January 31, 1948) tells the story of war veteran Seymour Glass, who commits suicide while on his honeymoon with his wife, Muriel, in Florida. While Muriel discusses fashion with her mother at the hotel bar, suicidal Seymour sits on the beach with an innocent young girl, Sybil, who becomes fascinated with him. Rating: A perfect 5/5.

"Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut" (first published in the The New Yorker, March 20, 1948) tells the story of suburban housewife, Eloise, still haunted by the death of Walt Glass, who was killed in an explosion during the war. As suggested by the subtle sideways glance of a drunken friend, Eloise has never recovered from Walt's death. This is a story as relevant today as when it was first published sixty years ago. Rating: 5/5.

"Just Before the War with the Eskimos" (first published in The New Yorker, June 5, 1948) tells the story of two high school classmates, Ginnie Mannox and Selena Graff, in a dispute over money. Ginnie and Selena play tennis together every Saturday, but Selena never offers to pay for their cab. When Ginnie confronts her, Selena explains, "It may interest you to know . . . that my mother is very ill." After meeting Selena's brother Franklin (who offers Ginnie half of his chicken sandwich) and his friend Eric at Selena's apartment, Ginnie has a sudden change of heart about the cab fare. Rating: 5/5.

"The Laughing Man" (first published in The New Yorker, March 19, 1949) tells a story within a story about a nine-year-old, who (along with his fellow "Comanches") would spend afternoons with "the Chief" (a Staten Island law student). At the end of each day, the Chief would tell them a new chapter in his on-going serial about a deformed criminal, which ultimately becomes the story of his doomed relationship with his summer girlfriend. Rating: 5/5.

"Down at the Dinghy" tells the story of Boo Boo Glass's peculiar young son, Lionel, who overhears a house servant, Sandra, refer to his father as a "big sloppy kike." Rating: 5/5.

"For Esmé - with Love and Squalor" (first published in The New Yorker, April 8, 1950) tells the story of Army Sergeant X (Buddy Glass?), who reminisces over a young girl, Esmé, who helped him to endure the squalor of WWII. He promises to correspond with Esmé and to write a story in her honor, but then suffers an emotional breakdown. This story becomes Sergeant X's recovery. Rating: 5/5.

"Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes" tells the story of two lawyers, in which one is distracted from a romantic evening with his love interest by his friend's midnight phone call about his missing wife. His troublesome wife, we learn, has failed to return home from a party. Rating: 5/5.

"De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period" tells the humorous story of a newly- hired art teacher at a correspondence "art academy," who falls hopelessly in love with a religious painting, the work of his sole pupil (a nun). Rating: 4/5.

"Teddy" (first published in The New Yorker, January 31, 1953) tells the story of a ten-year-old genius, Teddy McArdle. Revealing that he is wise beyond his years, Teddy discusses the very nature of existence with a graduate student, Nicholson, on board an oceanliner. Teddy recalls a previous life in which he was a man in India who was "making very nice spiritual advancement," but stopped praying upon meeting a woman. Teddy envisions his own death by being pushed into the empty pool by his sister. The haunting story ends with "an all-piercing, sustained scream--clearly coming from a small, female child." Rating: 5/5.

In Seymour: An Introduction, Salinger's fictional character, Buddy Glass, claims he wrote this story and several others in Nine Stories. Kurt Vonnegut has called each of these stories a "home run."

G. Merritt

Editorial Review:

Since the publication of The Catcher in the Rye in 1951, the works of J.D. Salinger have been acclaimed for their humor, intensity, and their lack of phoniness. A collection of short fiction, Nine Stories contains works with those qualities that make Salinger such a well-loved author.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell Boxed Three Volume Collector's Edition

Susanna Clarke

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 733 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Have you a pair of scissors? 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I started out being completely delighted and enchanted by Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Author Susanna Clarke has perfected a narrative voice that is thoroughly 19th century yet has a modern dry sense of humor. Likewise, her use of copious footnotes to give the reader background on magical history (making the book feel more like a historical novel than a work of fiction) are initially charming. After several hundred pages, however, things start to drag. The essential plot line concerns Mr. Norrell, a fearful, secretive magician who wants to return magic to England but be its only magician. He makes his name by restoring the beautiful young bride of Sir Walter Poole to life. However, no one knows that he has done so by enlisting the assistance of a fairy, known as the gentleman with thistle down hair or just "the gentleman," who takes his payment for aiding Norrel by enchanting the Lady Poole and essentially keeping her a slave in the balls he throws every night in Faerie land.

Enter Jonathan Strange, a young man who, rather than choosing magic, has had magic thrust upon. He becomes Norrell's pupil and, as is only fitting, soon surpasses his master. There are a number of intertwining story lines and characters, but the main thrust is the the rivalry between the two magicians and the increasingly malicious doings of the gentleman with thistle down hair. I found that the pace picked up in the last two hundred or so pages, when the plot becomes driven by higher stakes. Clarke and her editor should have stepped back and done some judicious cutting of the text. They could have done so without doing damage to the narrative voice or the plot, and it would have prevented more than one reader from wanting the throw the book across the room on occasion.

Clarke is a fabulous writer just, apparently, not so fabulous a re-writer/editor. This is a book that definitely requires some patience. The pay-off was not entirely satisfying to this reader, hence four stars instead of five.

Editorial Review:

Susanna Clarke’s first novel and international best-seller, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, is an utterly compelling heroic tale of nineteenth-century England and the two very different magicians who, as teacher and pupil and then as rivals, emerge to change its history.

The epic is now available as a beautiful collectable boxed set. The visually stunning set includes three paperback volumes, each bound in a different color: cranberry, black, and white.

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

Sherman Alexie

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 110 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

That's How I Do Life Sometimes By Making The Ordinary Just Like Magic... -Sherman Alexie 5 out of 5 stars.
14 of 16 people found this review helpful.

Halfway through this book I emailed the friend that bought it for me to tell him how much I was loving it. I then asked him "How the hell am I supposed to review this?" His reply was to explain that "He needs a new star, a category for 'Holy Sh!t, that one hit me hard.' But they don't make the Holy Sh!t category on Amazon." That pretty much says it all.

The truth is I was blown away by Sherman Alexie somewhere after the first paragraph of the introduction to this book. In the intro he presents himself in a manner that is completely honest and straightforward. He had me laughing from the start, and I can and do appreciate someone who can make fun of themselves. But through his introduction and throughout all the stories in this book, one word ran through my head continuously; brilliant.

I am not going to give any sort of plot summary because it's simply impossible. What I will do is give you the titles to a few of my favorites and if that doesn't entice you to want to read on, nothing will. This book contains 24 short on length but not on content, stories. Each story is unique, yet there is always a sense of familiarity, whether it's the presence of a familiar character, a diet Pepsi, fry bread or a basketball game. Each story is its own theme, place and time, but always about Mr. Alexie's Spokane Indian people and the reservation.

My favorites:
The Trial of Thomas Builds-the-Fire
Jesus Christ's Half-Brother is Alive and Well on the Spokane Indian Reservation
A Train is an Order of Occurrence
The Approximate Size of my Favorite Tumor

In his introduction he states that these stories contain some truths, but explains it as "reservation realism" and challenges us to figure out what exactly that means. My interpretation is that all these stories contain little threads of truth, some more than others, and with these little threads he weaves and enhances creating a blanket of fantasy and fiction. Whether I am right or wrong, I have to believ each tale is based on some truth, they were just too real to me to be otherwise.

I think I experienced every human emotion while reading this book, and then experienced them all over again. Some stories are horribly sad and gut wrenching, others are lighthearted and funny and mischievous; most are all of the above and then some. The one thing I am left with after reading this book is that Sherman Alexie conveys more in a short 5 page story than most writers manage to say in a full 300 page novel; that's an exquisite gift. I am grateful to my friend, eternally, for gifting me with this book and introducing me to this writer. I can't recommend this book enough, it's a treasure I will read and read and then read some more.

One Stick Song

Cherise Everhard, February 2008

Editorial Review:

When it was first published in 1993, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven established Sherman Alexie as a stunning new talent of American letters. The basis for the award-winning movie Smoke Signals, it remains one of his most beloved and widely praised books. In this darkly comic collection, Alexie brilliantly weaves memory, fantasy, and stark realism to paint a complex, grimly ironic portrait of life in and around the Spokane Indian Reservation. These twenty-two interlinked tales are narrated by characters raised on humiliation and government-issue cheese, and yet are filled with passion and affection, myth and dream. Against a backdrop of alcohol, car accidents, laughter, and basketball, Alexie depicts the distances between Indians and whites, reservation Indians and urban Indians, men and women, and, most poetically, modern Indians and the traditions of the past.

Quantum of Solace: The Complete James Bond Short Stories (James Bond 007)

Ian Fleming

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Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The contents of this book 4 out of 5 stars.
12 of 13 people found this review helpful.

This is a collection of all of the nine short stories about James Bond which were written by the late Ian Fleming.

(Fleming, of course, created the character of James Bond and was the author of the books which became the basis for all the James Bond movies. In addition to the short stories, Fleming wrote twelve novels about Bond.)

Over the years, these short stories have been kept in print in two collections: _For Your Eyes Only_, with five stories; and _Octopussy and The Living Daylights_, with four.

Now, for the first time ever, every one of the nine stories have been collected in a single volume, _Quantum of Solace_, which makes owning all these stories more convenient and economical.

That's the good news.

The not-so-good news is that the publisher here exercised no imagination, merely sandwiching together the contents of the two books.

Looking for a well-written foreword or afterword about these stories or their author? No such luck: The publisher includes no foreword or afterword at all.

The stories as earlier collected were not arranged according to the sequence of James Bond's life -- or to any other discernible plan. This new omnibus collection does absolutely nothing to fix that -- it just puts one unchanged collection behind another unchanged collection. This is disappointing, because we know from books by researchers like John Griswold (_Ian Fleming's James Bond: Annotations and Chronologies_) that there are sound ways to sequence the stories (and novels) by events in the life of James Bond.

Here are the contents of _Quantum of Solace_, as arranged in the book:

(Repeating the contents in sequence from _For Your Eyes Only_ ...)

"From a View to a Kill"
"For Your Eyes Only"
"Quantum of Solace"
"Risico"
"The Hildebrand Rarity"

(... and then repeating the contents of _Octopussy and The Living Daylights_)

"Octopussy"
"The Property of a Lady"
"The Living Daylights"
"007 in New York"

Editorial Review:

Many of Ian Fleming’s short stories have been the inspiration for the extremely successful James Bond film franchise, and included in this collection are such stories as Octopussy, The Living Daylights, and For Your Eyes Only. The title story, Quantum of Solace, lends its name to the upcoming James Bond film, slated to release in Fall 2008. This collection will be published to coincide with the film’s release, as well as to continue Penguin’s centenary celebrations of Fleming’s birth.

Heart and Soul

Maeve Binchy

Amazon Price: $19.77 List Price: $29.95 Not yet published By: Random House Audio

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

With the warmth, humor, and compassion we have come to expect from her, Maeve Binchy tells a story of family, friends, patients, and staff who are part of a heart clinic in a community caught between the old and the new Ireland.

Dr. Clara Casey has been offered the thankless job of establishing the underfunded clinic and agrees to take it on for a year. She has plenty on her plate already—two difficult adult daughters and the unwanted attentions of her exhusband—but she assembles a wonderfully diverse staff devoted to helping their demanding, often difficult patients: the infectiously cheerful nurse; the indispensable office manager who can’t quite manage her own life; the Polish girl who’s come to Ireland to put a bad love affair firmly in her past and the booming Irish economy in her future; the young doctor who has a special touch with his patients; the physical therapist who undertakes a very different kind of therapy involving a local priest and a stalker.

Before long they manage to establish the clinic as an essential part of the community and Clara must decide whether or not to leave a place where lives are saved, courage is rewarded, and humor and optimism triumph over greed and self-pity.

Heart and Soul is Maeve Binchy at her heartwarming storytelling best.

The Piano Teacher: A Novel

Janice Y. K. Lee

Amazon Price: $26.37 List Price: $39.95 Not yet published By: Penguin Audio

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Relatively good novel 3 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

The Piano Teacher is a complicated novel. On the surface, it's about a love affair between two British ex-patriots in Hong Kong in 1952-3. Claire Pendleton comes to Hong Kong with her husband Martin at a time when the world is still recovering from WWII; Claire takes up work as a piano teacher for the daughter of a wealthy Chinese family, where she meets Will Truesdale, the Chens' enigmatic chauffeur. The book jumps back in time between the 1950s and the beginning of WWII, when Will is interned in Stanley, a Hong Kong camp for enemies of Japan. On "the outside" is Tudy Liang, Will's beautiful Eurasian lover.

There's no doubt that Lee's writing is beautiful. But there's something lacking in this short, terse novel that I can't quite put my finger on. First, I think it's the tenses she uses when taking about each story: that which is set in the 1950s is in the past tense, while the war scenes are talked about in the present tense (confusing, no?) The interpersonal relationships of the main characters take a back seat to the horrors of Stanley camp (over 3000 people housed in a hotel with bad plumbing, bad food, and other horrendous conditions), as well as the brutal treatment of the British and Americans by the Japanese.

While the war scenes were sobering and thought-provoking, I would have liked to have seen more of the relationship between Trudy and Will. I would have liked to have found out more about Will and Claire's relationship, too: why are they drawn together, since they seem to have nothing in common? Too, there's a lot that's implied about what happened during the war, especially to Trudy and her cousin, Dommie; but we never find out for sure. And the "villain" in this novel wasn't quite what I expected, either. His motivations for doing what he did are a little odd. But as I've said, the writing is beautiful, the research is superb, and the setting is fantastic. I just wish that Lee had done more with her characters, because they had so much promise.

Editorial Review:

Unabridged CDs • 8 CDs, 10 hours

In the sweeping tradition of The English Patient, a gripping tale of love and betrayal set in war-torn Hong Kong.