Halfway through "All Aunt Hagar's Children," I found myself grappling with what made Jones's writing so singular. It wasn't just a gift for language, although the choice of words was always apt. Nor was it an innovative form, yet he could deftly cut back and forth through time to create fully dimensional characters with rich pasts and futures when needed, and seamlessly flit from meditations about his characters to concrete details. Then it dawned on me: he seemed to possess the biggest HEART of any writer I'd read. He didn't sentimentalize, nor did he forgive his characters their faults. But even as he witnessed some of them bring calumny upon themselves, he was compassionate, never allowing either himself or the reader to feel superior to their flaws or fates. Stories and characters emerged from all rungs of the social ladder, from the dirt-poor to the upper middle class, and Jones treated them all with great humanity.

I can't recall having read more absorbing stories, being so completely immersed, time and again, in different characters' worlds. As others have mentioned, each story is like a mini-novel, vivid, rounded, and fully dimensional. And even for someone who doesn't use the word "masterpiece" lightly, I believe it's entirely appropriate for this volume and its individual contents. One story, "Bad Neighbors," has a character named Derek as vivid as any in Shakespeare, as palpably real as someone you met this morning. "Common Law" views a brawling couple from the eyes of neighborhood children; "Tapestry," set within the depths of rural Southern poverty in the 30s (with magazine covers used as wallpaper), manages to be elegaic, with an elegance of style befitting its characters' essential dignity.
The best short story collections I can remember offhand are Hemingway's, Maupassant's, Chekhov's, Tillie Olsen's, and Joyce's. These are their equal, if not superior.

Jones's work in "All Aunt Hagar's Children" truly stands out and demands to be read and appreciated for its depth, humanity, and literary excellence. It's a collection that will stay with you long after you've turned the last page.

I was less than impressed by the first three of the 14 stories in this book. However, since it was on my 2015 reading challenge (all short story books), I persevered with the hope that I would come across a few stories that I liked. And indeed, my hopes were not in vain.

All the stories feature African American main characters and are set in or connected to Washington D.C. I truly wish I had a better understanding of the D.C. geography, as it likely would have made the stories even more vivid and lifelike.

There is a palpable darkness and sadness that pervades most of these stories, with some being more prominent than others. Whites look down on African Americans, and African Americans look down on other African Americans, often for the same reasons. But in most of the stories, there are also decent people striving to live good lives or already doing so. In many cases, there are those who have raised their standard of living and are watching their children achieve even greater heights, although unfortunately, there are some children who, despite these efforts, still seem lost.

My favorite story was "A Poor Guatemalan Dreams of a Downtown in Peru." This story revolves around three survivors of disasters. The oldest survivor has experienced multiple "miracles" in her life. In the first miracle, she managed to survive but lost her parents, aunt, uncle, and others when the footbridge they were crossing, carrying all the provisions for a picnic, was swept away. The youngest survivor's first miracle occurred when she was spending the night with a friend and the friend's father killed his entire family and then himself, yet she escaped unharmed. In one of the miracles, both the youngest and the oldest survivor managed to survive when they were pushed in front of a metro car, and they remained connected ever after.

In all the stories, the author skillfully intersperses facts about a character's future life. Sometimes these details serve to relieve the tension, while at other times they heighten it. I really like this device as it gives the impression that the characters have a life that extends beyond the end of the story. In the last story - "Tapestry" - this device is used in a unique way. We are presented with what a woman's life would have been like if her cousin - a sleeping car porter - hadn't changed his destination in the middle of his journey to seek his future and instead gone to D.C.

Overall, while the first few stories didn't initially grab my attention, the book as a whole had its moments of interest and charm, especially with the diverse range of characters and the thought-provoking themes it explored.

The fourteen stories in this book all revolve around African-Americans living in and around Washington D.C.

The first story takes place in 1901 and the last story is set in the early 1930’s. However, all the rest of the stories occupy an unspecified era between the end of World War II and maybe the 1980’s.

I live in the Washington D.C. area, but I’ve never lived in the District proper. Even so, the characters in Jones’ stories remind me of some people I know. There are those who have been in D.C. for generations and those who started in the South and then headed north to this city.

The first three stories of All Aunt Hagar’s Children didn’t leave strong impressions. Although I liked Jones’ writing and there were nuggets in each of those stories that shone. But the fourth story “Old Boys, Old Girls” gelled together in a marvelous way. It follows a murderer named Caeser as he serves his time in Lorton prison and then is released back into the world. Unlike the first three stories, when the ending rolled around it didn’t feel abrupt or vague to me, but instead perfectly timed.

Other favorite stories included “A Poor Guatamalan Dreams of a Downtown in Peru”. In this story, the main character continually survives tragic natural disasters and freak accidents while her companions perish. The somewhat supernatural flair of this story was nicely done.

“Common Law” is told through the eyes of a neighborhood’s children. A woman sees the beginning and end of an abusive relationship.

“Adam Robinson Acquires Grandparents and a Little Sister” is both a sad and sweet story. It is told from the perspective of a grandfather as he and his wife are finally reunited with their grandson who had been lost in the system after his drug-addicted parents abandoned him.

Through the frequent use of flashbacks and flash-forwards, Jones manages to give an epic sheen to each story. While the story may take place primarily in the 1970s, references will be made to an ancestor who was a slave, or to older relatives who met danger in the Jim Crow South and then, alternately, there will be references to a character’s future circumstances.

Jones’ depiction of time’s fluidity is displayed most dramatically in the last story, “Tapestry”. In this story, a young woman living in Mississippi is courted by a man visiting from Washington, D.C. It is the early 1930’s. Jones starts the story with an alternative timeline where the young woman – Anne – marries a different suitor and stays in Mississippi to the end of her days. Then Jones brings the reader back to the actual timeline, where Anne marries the visitor and takes a train with him to D.C. She and her new husband get into a quarrel on the trip, and Jones then takes us into Anne’s mind as she vividly imagines returning to her beloved Mississippi hometown – each house she would pass by, each bend in the dirt road she would take to get back to her father’s house. It’s an extraordinary bit of storytelling, and a perfect story to end the collection.

With this collection, Edward P. Jones joins a list of authors that I believe I can depend on for good storytelling.

Edward P. Jones’ Lost in the City, his initial collection of short stories, holds the status of a contemporary American masterpiece.

Similar to Lost in the City, Jones’s All Aunt Hagar’s Children centers around the tales of the diverse and long-established African American community in Washington, D.C. during the 1950s and 1960s. It delves into their eager and hopeful migrations from the rural south to D.C., their rediscovery of their rural roots, their loves and acts of forbearance, and their rise to become successful bureaucrats and professionals, while sometimes leading less successful and rougher lives.

All Aunt Hagar’s Children can also be regarded as a dialogue or a continuation of Jones’s stories in Lost in the City. This collection features several outstanding stories. My personal favorites are “In the Blink of God’s Eye,” “Spanish in the Morning,” “Adam Robinson Acquires,” “Common Law,” and “Tapestry.” However, a few other stories, such as “Old Boys, Old Girls,” “A Poor Guatemalan Dreams,” and “The Devil Swims Across,” were more challenging for me to appreciate.

Nonetheless, despite what I perceived as some inconsistency in the stories, All Aunt Hagar’s Children is brimming with wonderful and memorable scenes, sentences, paragraphs, and dialogue. It offers a rich and vivid portrayal of the African American experience during that particular era.

I know precisely why this is a New York Times Notable Book.

These are not just ordinary stories; they are filled with wonderfully complex characters and intricate plots that draw you in from the very beginning.

The tales that unfold, centered around the African-American community in Washington DC, are truly unique. They offer a vivid and detailed glimpse into a world that is rich in culture, history, and human experiences.

Edward Jones is an incredibly talented and wonderful storyteller. His ability to bring these characters and their stories to life is nothing short of remarkable. He weaves together a tapestry of emotions, relationships, and events that keep you engaged and invested until the very end.

It is no wonder that this book has received such high acclaim and recognition as a New York Times Notable Book.

Having been an ardent admirer of the author's novel The Known World and having held a great liking for Lost in the City (short stories), my anticipation for this collection was palpable. However, I am deeply sorry to express that I have been left disappointed. The writing itself is captivating, yet the stories appear to be repetitious and overwhelmingly, almost unbearably sad. The characters seldom experience happiness, satisfaction, or fulfillment. The endings are, unfortunately, predictably tragic. It seems as if fate has dealt harsh lives and cruel deaths to a multitude of them. Perhaps I am being overly optimistic, but shouldn't there be something to anticipate, some glimmer of grace or peace bestowed upon these tormented souls? Nevertheless, I will continue to eagerly look forward to Mr. Jones' next novel or any other literary work he produces. In the meantime, I would like to suggest to those readers who have not yet delved into this collection that they might instead give The Known World a try.

Edward P. Jones is truly a remarkable writer.

One of the aspects I admire most about him is his extraordinary ability to compress time within his works. This skill allows him to pack a wealth of experiences and emotions into a relatively short span, creating a sense of depth and complexity that is truly astonishing.

Moreover, his characters and their situations are crafted with the utmost care and nuance. He has a unique talent for bending the expectations of race and gender, often in a way that is both comical and piercing. By doing so, he challenges our preconceived notions and forces us to look at the world from different perspectives.

Jones' writing is a masterclass in storytelling, and his works continue to inspire and captivate readers around the world.

I really liked this in the beginning.

His writing style is truly great, and he has the remarkable ability to tell a good story. However, as I delved deeper into the stories, there were parts that started to lose me.

When I say "losing", I don't simply mean a loss of interest. Literally, I found myself unable to figure out what he was referring to or the story became unclear for no obvious reason.

I absolutely loved the narrator. He sounded exactly like the one from "Color of Water" and did a fabulous job.

I am kind of disappointed because I was so excited to hear about DC in the 1900s. This is a book that I may come back to at some point.

Maybe I will try "The Known World" first to see if it can satisfy my literary cravings.

This is an extraordinary collection of stories about African-Americans in and around Washington D.C. It spans from the time of early migrations from the South to roughly the 1980s.

I had the opportunity to read some of these stories before they were collected, in The New Yorker. Others I read when the book first came out, and still others only more recently. As a result, in a piecemeal fashion, I've now read a few of the pieces in the collection three or four times.

I mention this because, although I was a wildly enthusiastic fan of Jones's previous books, Lost in the City and The Known World, I was initially disappointed by many of the tales here. I thought they were diffuse and inconclusive. However, this was entirely due to the fact that they are actually even richer and more complex than the stories in Lost in the City. Often, they can't be fully appreciated on a first read.

Jones often deals with such large swaths of time and so many characters that it can take one or two readings just to absorb everything that's happening. It's only on later reads that the delicacy, psychology, and patterning of the stories begin to work their singular magic.

Jones is going to be read decades and decades from now, when many writers who are more comfortable with and willing to exploit (or be exploited by) the media have come to seem less relevant. His work has a depth and complexity that will stand the test of time.

I was extremely excited to embark on reading this collection of short stories by Edward Jones. After being thoroughly impressed by the excellent reviews of "The Known World" and learning that "All Aunt Hagar's Children" would unfold the tales of families residing in Washington, DC, which happens to be my beloved hometown, at diverse junctures throughout history.

Indeed, I did relish the discussions regarding the neighborhoods in DC. However, as I delved into the stories, I was confronted with such abhorrent conditions in the characters' lives. By the time I reached just the second or third story in the edition, I had already become very frustrated.

While many of the stories are truly fascinating and engaging, an excessive number of them seem to drag on interminably. I found myself increasingly frustrated with the predominantly negative focus of the entire collection. It was a rather disappointing read considering my deep affection for the town of Washington, DC.

Overall, despite the initial promise and the interesting aspects related to my hometown, this book failed to fully captivate me and left me with a sense of letdown.

Despite all that has happened to you, you are, in the end, no better than all the rest of us who must fight to stay afloat. We want, we rage, we desire, we fail, we succeed. We stand in that long, long line. Where were you when they taught us that?

This clip serves as a rather good thesis for this collection of short stories from Edward P. Jones, the Pulitzer-claiming author of The Known World. The common thread running through these tales is that of African-American families either living in or aspiring to live in Washington, D.C., at different times in the 20th century. Does it sound interesting? If not, then it's not for you. However, it is for those who appreciate style and form and have the patience to let a story unfold over 25 or 30 pages rather than having their literary entertainment spoonfed to them.

To be honest, I only read half of the volume's 14 stories. I lost my commitment at the midpoint and felt I had given it a good try. (Also, a friend recommended Daniel Pennac's Rights of the Reader to me, a list of 10 that includes "the right to not finish a book. There's so much literature in the world; I feel so relieved!) One problem I had with Jones's stories is that some were not clear-cut enough for me to distinguish their details from other stories I read later. In my mind, they started to blend together.

"In the Blink of God's Eye" opens and tells of love and loss, a primary theme in these shorts. (What better themes could there be?) "A Poor Guatemalan Dreams of a Downtown in Peru" is not as pretentious as its title might suggest, but it's also a romance, albeit one set up by and revolving around a series of tragic coincidences that are quite possibly more maddening than those in The Kite Runner (and that's saying something). "Guatemalan" reaches its peak early and often and ends beautifully, though.

"Spanish in the Morning" inhabits a schoolgirl's thoughts and ways to a startling effect. "Resurrecting Methuselah" weaves one family's困境 around the father's breast cancer diagnosis (he simply can't believe in the mid-20th-century that that's what he has). However, that story ends rather abruptly or shabbily, tapering off to nothingness. (I had the same complaint about Roald Dahl's The Umbrella Man shorts as well.)

"Old Boys, Old Girls" has a woman's former lover coming across her corpse in an apartment and then systematically tidying up the premises and inexplicably cleaning up her body and dressing her in fresh clothes on top of the covers. It may be morbid but it's also touching, for sure. The titular story, “All Aunt Hagar's Children,” has an ex-con enlisted by a dead man's mother to find her son's killer. She doesn't seek revenge; she simply wants to know who did it. The man is resigned but determined, and what he uncovers at the end of the tale is worth the read.

"Blood spilled with violence never goes away, I remembered my mother teaching Freddy and me, and you can see it if you have a mind to."

The stories presented here paint a vivid picture of our nation's capital as seen through the eyes and experiences of a diverse group of African Americans who consider it their home. Jones introduces various characters: doctors, retired civil servants, schoolchildren, but also women-beaters, drug-users, and other miscreants. He enriches the life of the city through the tales of these citizens, constructing a richly layered narrative with a reasonable semblance of truth, and adding a touch of the magical. However, for me, something was still amiss.

Despite the meticulous details and careful plotting, the collection often appeared artistically unremarkable, leaving me with a sense of the author's laborious efforts to bring these stories to fruition. It's difficult to pinpoint any specific flaw as all the elements are present and Jones is a competent writer. Nevertheless, the stories lacked a certain freshness. I read with the hope that something would ignite at some point, but unfortunately, that was not the case, and I was left feeling like someone who had to make do with day-old doughnuts.

I can't claim that these stories are bad, but, to be honest, having relished the author's novel, The Known World, I was left disappointed.