The language employed in these works is truly exquisite, with a certain charm and elegance that immediately captivates the reader.

However, the stories themselves I often found puzzling. There were times when the plot twists and turns seemed rather convoluted, leaving me scratching my head and wondering what exactly was going on.

I feel like I need to re-read them to truly understand what the author was getting at. It's as if there are hidden layers of meaning beneath the surface that I'm not quite able to grasp on the first go.

Perhaps with a second reading, I'll be able to pick up on the subtleties and nuances that I missed the first time around. I'm eager to embark on this re-reading journey and see if I can gain a deeper appreciation and understanding of these fascinating stories.

Most of these tales bear a closer resemblance to fables rather than short stories. They are the kind of fables that could potentially be shared among friends who are gathered closely around a crackling hearth on a chilly night.

I firmly believe that it must have been a period filled with anxiety for Denmark. Having declared its neutrality during World War II, it was promptly occupied by Germany.

Nevertheless, all these stories maintain a generally optimistic outlook on human nature and offer reassurance. They serve as comforting reminders of the more positive aspects of human capability.

The first and the last tale in this collection directly address the art of storytelling and function as nice bookends for the remainder of the stories. They add a touch of cohesion and a sense of closure to the overall collection, making it a more engaging and satisfying read.

No better time for a collection of winter-themed tales than August, right?

The falcon on the cover initially caught my attention. Sadly, although this book is replete with rich and enchanting descriptions, featuring adventurous seamen and mischievous children, it simply didn't resonate with me.

I can scarcely find fault with the writing itself. The synopsis labels them as ‘tales of longing’, yet a more prevalent sentiment throughout is that of ambivalence, or perhaps even the unnaturalness of a life lived without fear.

Many of the tales piqued my interest at first. Take ‘The Young Man with the Carnation’, for instance. However, they then seemed to drag on or take an unexpected turn to a place where I struggled to follow, much like a clear narrative losing its way in the midst of a snowstorm.

Sometimes a work of fiction aligns with our own experiences and sometimes it doesn't.

‘A public cannot be merciful to an artist, if it were merciful it would not be a public. […] Neither can an artist be merciful to his public, – or it has, at least, never been tried.’ This thought-provoking statement from ‘A Consolatory Tale’ adds another layer of complexity to the overall reading experience.

It makes one wonder about the relationship between the artist and the audience, and how their expectations and perspectives can sometimes clash.

Overall, while this collection of winter-themed tales had its moments of charm and intrigue, it ultimately failed to fully engage me.

Perhaps it was simply a matter of personal taste, or maybe there were other factors at play.

Regardless, it serves as a reminder that not every book will be a perfect fit for every reader.

Dinesen's prose style in Winter Tales is less intricate than that of her earlier stories in Seven Gothic Tales (SGT). This could be attributed to the circumstances of its publication during the Nazi occupation of Denmark. With severely limited lines of communication, the editing was largely at the discretion of her American publisher.

Looking back, I would have preferred to first read Winter Tales with its less intricate and developed prose style, and then move on to SGT, as the latter required some adjustment.

Reading Dinesen is not so much about the tales themselves but rather about her aesthetics, which she has skillfully incorporated into almost every one. She effectively presents philosophical viewpoints on meaning, existence, and their relationship to art, without the awkward name-dropping and preachiness often found in other authors. Clearly, Kierkegaard and Goethe serve as models for her aristocratic temperament, and while familiarity with these two is useful, it is not essential.

Her works offer a unique and engaging exploration of the human condition and the power of art.

It truly felt like a remarkable accomplishment to have completed this short story collection. And despite the considerable amount of time it took to finish, I found myself thoroughly enjoying it!! Each story was told in a rich and detailed manner, filled with profound allegories, and often containing a story within a story, making it far from light reading. What I adored was that some of these stories would ever so slightly veer towards the realm of fantasy and the supernatural in the most delicate of ways. Almost all of them were firmly rooted in Danish history and values. In fact, I can't actually single out a favorite at the moment. I think I'll need to spend a little more time with these stories to truly understand how I feel about each and every one of them. This was most definitely outside my comfort zone, but it was absolutely worth delving into the completely foreign scenes that Dinesen so masterfully creates.

The first story might not be that excellent, but don't let that hold you back.

It is actually a remarkable collection of stories penned in an old-fashioned style, delving into the concepts of what is right and wrong, what is ethical and morally upright, and so on.

All those aspects that seemingly don't matter anymore in today's world.

Apparently, she was in the running for the Nobel prize. However, the committee was worried about being perceived as having a bias towards Scandinavian writers.

Despite this, I am definitely going to read more of her works.

I am intrigued by her unique writing style and the profound themes she explores.

I believe there is much to learn and gain from her stories, which can offer valuable insights into the human condition and our moral compass.

So, don't be deterred by the initial story. Give this collection a chance and discover the hidden gems within.

Short stories, by their very nature, are snippets. They might follow a traditional beginning, middle, and end structure, but being snippets, they don't have to strictly adhere to it. Either way, we often hope they unfold before us like a single strand of light. We seek illumination and insight.

"Winter's Tales" consists of eleven short stories, and they often feel as if they're hidden behind a shell. This doesn't mean author Isak Dinesen's style is deliberately elusive or guarded. "Unknowable" seems closer, yet it would miss the air of possibility that pervades each story, the richly constructed psychology of the characters, and the significant consequences of the crossroads they face.

Some of these tales end in tragedy, while others don't. But each is filled with high stakes that emerge naturally from the landscape. This is a world of magic without whimsy, a world of surprising climaxes that are never grandiose, and twists that seem inevitable in hindsight. It's a book about imperfect, highly self-aware humans who struggle to understand their companions and their place in society.

If you approach this collection, as I often do with a new short story collection, expecting to boil each one down to "what was the meaning?", it might give you a bit of a hard time.

Some of these "Winter's Tales" follow more familiar conventions than others. For the bold reader who likes to zigzag through the table of contents, "The Sailor-Boy's Tale" is a good place to start. It's a fun fairy tale with a dark side. Its budding world of puppy love and drunken antics quickly becomes consequential. But magic kicks in in a most satisfying way, ensuring that the hero's charity and misdeeds are proportionately weighted.

Dinesen's deliberately old-school prose has a way of weaving the characters into their scenes with thick braids of galvanized metal. Even in an ostensibly fairy tale like "Sailor-Boy", this tone is present from the start, inviting the reader to accept the deus-ex-machina-like ending. It makes "Sailor-Boy" a great primer for the other ten less fantastical stories.

And "Sailor-Boy" serves as an excellent setup for the memorable "Peter and Rosa", one of "Winter's Tales'" greatest triumphs of characterization. On paper, this story should be an innocent, whimsical adventure. But we sense a foreboding throughout. Is it because the two protagonists want something from each other that the other can't give, and they avoid better communication in favor of unspoken assumptions and the thrill of resolute action? When "Peter and Rosa" ends, it seems harsh to say they got what they deserved, but they definitely get what they - and the environment around them - created.

The specter of unknowability, foiling one character's understanding of another, looms large in these stories, but sometimes it doesn't end painfully. Sometimes it just goes weirdly against expectations. One of my other favorites was "The Heroine". With elements of subterfuge and deception, it's the closest "Winter's Tales" gets to the border of the spy thriller. It's definitely one of the most exciting tales, unveiling sweeping measures of heroism and morality that are truly impressive.

But we always know that we're not getting the full story in "The Heroine". When we follow the protagonist as he revisits these moments years later, the extra insight we gain leaves us a little confused. The proper moral code for a situation can be situational and a gamble at that. While things work out much better for the cast of "The Heroine" than in some of the other stories, it could easily have gone the other way. "The Heroine" defies our natural desire for a one-size-fits-all moral and tactical solution. Life is just hard sometimes, especially when dealing with vicious, abusive authority.

The same is true of "Sorrow-Acre", the longest story in the book and its closest thing to a centerpiece. The countryside and social hierarchy it constructs is a magnificent achievement in a relatively short number of pages. Here too, authority is a harsh stickler, but the dilemma is amplified because none of the people wielding authority seem power-hungry or abusive. In some ways, this makes a misstep on the part of authority even worse. Against these circumstances, another type of hero emerges, one almost superhuman in her defiance.

Other stories make the authority figure the protagonist. In "The Fish", one is metaphorically undressed, while in "A Consolatory Tale", the other is allowed to explore the peripheries of self-awareness. These are great dueling psychological case studies, but Dinesen keeps it clear that the bottom line of the powerless and the subjugated is what matters.

When "Winter's Tales" was published in 1942, Europe was under pressure and subjugated. This is all the more relevant since Dinesen - and this was unknown to me when I started reading - is the pen name for Karen Blixen, also the author of "Out of Africa". Among worthy and beloved Danish authors, she holds as much or even more esteem as Kierkegaard and Hans Christian Andersen. Dinesen/Blixen had a lot to say about human morality and connectedness in a harsh world that, at the time of "Winter's Tales", was getting even harsher.

One of Dinesen's signatures, at least in this collection, is that she, like J.D. Salinger in "Nine Stories", writes about children with gripping clarity and vigor. Alongside their innocence, she has a knack for imbuing a sort of fatalism - sometimes they are one and the same - and this too adds to "Winter's Tales" as an exploration of life's inherently high stakes. Along with the aforementioned "Peter and Rosa" (which itself stars children), "The Dreaming Child" and "Alkmene" are some of the book's peaks of characterization. Both stories feature children who seem aware and ephemeral to a degree that seems too transcendent for ordinary life, yet too unhappy for a world of magic.

What are we left with, exactly? Perplexities. The wonderment of these two stories seems to aim very high, and yet the endings deliberately fall short of the dazzling reinvention and storybook endings we expect from typical fairy tales. It's not like Dinesen did this to frustrate us - you arrive at each story's ending thinking "Yeah, I guess that's pretty much where that character had to end up."

"Dreaming Child" and "Alkmene" seem like suitable microcosms for the whole book, because I remember them more for the richness of their characters than for the satisfaction of their plot arcs. These - all of them - are stories where wondrous daydreaming meets situational stress and, sometimes, interpersonal disappointment.

Modern-day readers often prefer darker endings. That's one way to read this book. Another would be to focus first and foremost (though not exclusively) on the atmosphere of the stories. All eleven stories are beautifully written. If you enjoy losing yourself in another world through the power of prose, you can't go wrong here. Still, when I think about the intention behind that pairing - the daydream and the bleak - I can't help but think it's just as risky to discard the former as it is to be blind to the latter. The author chose both of these elements deliberately. I suspect she knew what she was doing.

This one's difficult for me, as I enjoyed it immensely but felt it was hiding itself from me for most of my reading - or I wasn't looking hard enough.

A series of short stories centered around Denmark, ships and young girls, and at a crossroads between fairy-tales and a bleaker realism. None of them end in nihilism, but few have traditionally happy endings. For example, in Sorrow-Acre it ends with death, and in lingering philosophical uncertainty. However, I still held the feeling that something had been fulfilled. Similarly, in Peter and Rosa they both die in what could be considered a trivial manner, but I also saw it as a redemption and, in a way, fitting.

I definitely missed a lot of subtext in this one, and I will definitely have to go through it again in future. But as far as my visceral feelings toward it go, I followed along each story happily. Karen Blixen is definitely one of the greatest writers of stories I could name. She has a true ability to create people and to instill a real feeling of higher ideals in the world that I struggle to find in other writing. Her stories are like a magical tapestry, weaving together elements of fantasy and reality, creating a world that is both beautiful and tragic. Each character is vividly drawn, and their experiences and emotions feel real and palpable. I can't wait to explore more of her works and discover the hidden depths and meanings within them.

I really enjoyed these tales by Isak Dinesen. They were so captivating and engaging that I have decided to reread a few more of her tales.

The selection is titled 'Winter's Tales', but it's important to note that not all of the stories occur during the winter season. This might give the impression that it's only suitable for a Christmas read, but that would be a mistake.

In fact, these tales can be enjoyed at any time of the year. They offer a diverse range of themes and settings, which makes them accessible and interesting to a wide audience.

Whether you're looking for a bit of escapism or a thought-provoking read, Isak Dinesen's 'Winter's Tales' is definitely worth checking out.

The Young Man With The Carnation â­â­ 2/5
Sorrow-Acre â­â­â­â­ 4/5
The Heroine â­â­â­â­ 4/5
The Sailor-Boy's Tale â­â­â­â­â­ 5/5
The Pearls â­â­â­ 3/5
The Invincible Slave-Owners â­â­ 2/5
The Dreaming Child â­â­â­â­ 4/5
Alkmene â­â­â­ 3/5
The Fish â­â­â­ 3/5
Peter and Rosa â­â­â­â­ 4/5
A Consolatory Tale â­â­ 2/5

This book is without a doubt the most frustrating one I have ever come across. I was aware from the start that short story collections can be a bit of a hit or miss. However, although I thoroughly enjoyed the writing style, I couldn't help but feel extremely exasperated with these stories as a whole.

Isak Dinesen writes beautifully, to put it simply. I can't even begin to describe how many passages and turns of phrase there were that truly took my breath away. The writing itself is the reason I gave this book three stars. I liked what I read, but I just didn't understand it.

I like to believe that with being a lifelong reader and having taken my fair share of literature courses, my literary comprehension and analysis skills are at least decent. So, it was very discouraging for me when, after finishing what felt like every story here, I was left thinking "huh?" Especially after reading one glowing review after another. Maybe I was just overthinking it, or maybe I'm not as smart as I thought.

Ultimately, I finished this book feeling frustrated because I had hoped to enjoy it so much more than I did. Maybe I would revisit this if I had the opportunity to read it with a book club or a class, but for now, I'm glad I borrowed it from the library.

I was completely blown away by her style. Her grace with the language is simply remarkable. In terms of descriptions, she has the power to evoke everything and anything she wants for the reader to witness. It's a unique blend of tale as a form and short story, combining the old and the modern in a seamless way. Her writing is reminiscent of Kate Mansfield's style, which is a high compliment indeed. She has a way of drawing the reader in and making them feel as if they are a part of the story. Her characters are vivid and real, and the settings she creates are so detailed that you can almost picture yourself there. It's rare to come across a writer with such talent and skill, and I can't wait to see what she comes up with next.

4.5

These stories, with their glorious yet sorrowful settings, are like "honey and holy incense." They are also like ominous clouds that roll in, bringing with them tempests. A voice whispers, "By the pricking of my thumbs…"

I read this immediately after reading Anecdotes of Destiny and Ehrengard. It surprised me greatly and I enjoyed it immensely. These stories were just as enjoyable as Anecdotes, similar in some ways but with a different tone. Destiny remains a central theme. They are wonderfully sensual and earthy, haunting in their spiritual resonance. They are imbued with profound irony, gold dusted and bloody, with the beauty, magic, cruelty, and wisdom of legends, fables, and fairy tales. They are the salt in the sea air, the golden hay in the field. They are the mysterious forces of human emotions and the fulfillment of destinies. The sometimes dreamlike sense of reality permeates throughout.
These stories have a unique charm that draws the reader in and keeps them engaged. They explore the depths of human nature and the mysteries of life. The settings are vividly described, making it easy for the reader to imagine themselves in the midst of the action. The characters are well-developed and their emotions are palpable. Overall, these stories are a must-read for anyone who enjoys literature that is both beautiful and thought-provoking.