I had made numerous attempts to read this book.

Why is it that loving Welty has been such a challenge for me? Perhaps the absurd southern character types (are they caricatures?) strike too close to home for this East Texas girl.

However, I persisted this time, and once again I find myself owing Miss Welty an apology.

This book is filled with some of the most exquisitely beautiful sentences and passages that I have ever had the pleasure of reading.

The concept of separate stories intertwined by a common thread (the short story cycle) functions extremely well in illustrating just how inseparable loneliness is from community ties.

I am truly glad that I gave it another opportunity.

It has opened my eyes to the depth and beauty of Welty's writing, and I look forward to exploring more of her works in the future.

I found the book to be rich and true in its portrayal of the setting and nature. The descriptions were so vivid that they seemed to come alive in my mind.

However, some of the chapters, which were told from difficult voices, were rather challenging to interpret. It felt as if I was missing some crucial pieces of the puzzle.

I truly wish I’d had a class that covered this book. I believe there is a wealth of knowledge and insights within its pages that would enlighten the reader.

Perhaps in a classroom setting, with the guidance of a teacher and the perspectives of fellow students, I would have been able to better understand the complex themes and characters.

Nonetheless, despite the difficulties I encountered, I still found the book to be a worthwhile read, and I look forward to exploring more works by the same author.

I had been harbouring the intention to read something penned by Eudora Welty for an extended period. Now that I have finally managed to get around to it, I find myself experiencing a sense of letdown. Truly, I did not take any pleasure in this book. I had to endure a great struggle to reach its conclusion, and that felt almost like a form of penance. Perhaps, upon a second reading, I might derive more enjoyment from it. Maybe one of her other novels would be more to my liking. However, quite likely, I will never have the opportunity to know for sure.

The characters and the environment in which they are situated seemed to be so extraordinarily strange that at times it gave the impression of being more like a wildlife documentary rather than a novel. Rape and murder make their appearances in these stories, and when they do, they are described in such a nonchalant and blasé fashion that I had to peruse the relevant passages several times to ensure that I had not misinterpreted them. And yet, I am still not entirely certain whether I truly understood.

All in all, this is not a book for me. Not in the slightest.

"As Maçãs Douradas" by Eudora Welty is in a way beyond the human mind; beyond what addresses fiction. Welty's fiction is poetry, but more than just poetry. It is complex in non-supernatural forms, yet perhaps in a super-human way: in forms that are real but go beyond the human mind. Virgie, in the closing story of the collection, "The Wanderers", is a good example of this.

She knew that now in the river, where she had been before on moonlit autumn nights, drunk and sleepless, mist was on the water and filled the trees, and to the eyes looking at the moon it would be a cone, a long silent horn, of white light. It was a visible connection like the hair is in the air, between the self and the moon, making the self feel like a child, a very, very distant child. Then, the water, warmer than the night air or the self that could suddenly be cold, like all other arms, carried the body along, running invisibly to the mouth. As she drifted in the river, very alert, very insolent in her heart in those days, the fine mist could momentarily and the brilliant jewel eyes would be out of the line of the water and the bank. Sometimes, in the woods a firefly would glow, in and out, in and out, for so long in the middle of the night, while she was there to see.

Nothing about the above is beyond reality, but it is indeed beyond the normal human consciousness. It is as if the characters in the book are constantly in meditation, absorbing all the details around them: making even the tiniest "visible like the hair is in the air."

Meditation extends well beyond the natural world, but to all the people of Welty's Morgana, Mississippi: from the bubbly socialites not exactly like Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway to the introverted men like Ran MacLain of "Everybody Knows", these characters are the subjects of Welty's meditation and are so dear and clear to her that "in the woods a firefly [that] would glow, in and out, in and out, for so long in the middle of the night, while she was there to see."