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Okay, actually a 2.5.
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The Stories of Mary Gordon
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The masterly stories of Mary Gordon return us to the pleasure of this writer's craft and to her monumental talent as an observer of character and of the ever-fading American Dream. These pieces encompass the pre- and postwar Irish American family life she circles in the early Temporary Shelter series, as well as a wealth of new fiction that brings her contemporary characters into middle age; it is their turn to face bodily decline, mortality, and the more complex anxieties of modern life. Gordon captures the sharp scent of feelings as they shift, the shape of particular lives in their hope and incomprehensibility.
In The Neighborhood, a seven-year-old who has lost her father finds birthday parties, with their noisy games and spun-sugar roses on fancy cakes, her greatest trial. City Life explores the dark side of Manhattan apartment living. Intertextuality proposes a dream meeting between Proust's characters and the author's aging grandmother. Throughout, Gordon's surprising path to the center of a story is as much a part of the tale as the self-understanding her characters achieve in the process: What were they all, any of them, feeling?one narrator ventures. This was the sort of question no one in my family would ask. Feelings were for others: the weak, the idle. We were people who got on with things.
With their powerful insights into how we make do, both socially and privately, these stories are a treasure of American fiction. Each is a joy to read and a chance to savor Gordon's clear vision: her ability to reveal at every turn what we need and what we wish for, and her willingness, always, to address what comes of such precious wishes.
In The Neighborhood, a seven-year-old who has lost her father finds birthday parties, with their noisy games and spun-sugar roses on fancy cakes, her greatest trial. City Life explores the dark side of Manhattan apartment living. Intertextuality proposes a dream meeting between Proust's characters and the author's aging grandmother. Throughout, Gordon's surprising path to the center of a story is as much a part of the tale as the self-understanding her characters achieve in the process: What were they all, any of them, feeling?one narrator ventures. This was the sort of question no one in my family would ask. Feelings were for others: the weak, the idle. We were people who got on with things.
With their powerful insights into how we make do, both socially and privately, these stories are a treasure of American fiction. Each is a joy to read and a chance to savor Gordon's clear vision: her ability to reveal at every turn what we need and what we wish for, and her willingness, always, to address what comes of such precious wishes.
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Genres
short storiesfiction
480 pages, Hardcover
First published October 3,2006
This edition
- Format
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480 pages, Hardcover
- Published
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October 3, 2006 by Pantheon
- ISBN
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9780375423161
- ASIN
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0375423168
- Language
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English
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Community Reviews
Rating(4.1 / 5.0, 27 votes)
5 stars
11(41%)
4 stars
7(26%)
3 stars
9(33%)
2 stars
0(0%)
1 stars
0(0%)
27 reviews All reviews
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I loved her dark stories. My favorite was the one about the woman who grew up in a dirty home and tries to hang out with her filthy neighbor after she's moved out.
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Mary Gordon's prose is so precise and elegant, Her characters so deftly drawn, her stories are a pleasure to read, even though they tend to end on a depressing note.
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So far I love it -
the stories are well written and very short. Sometimes I can read one a day. Each one is different.
I am not done with the book yet, but so far I like it a lot.
the stories are well written and very short. Sometimes I can read one a day. Each one is different.
I am not done with the book yet, but so far I like it a lot.
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This is an interesting collection of short stories that are intriguing and explore many charters.
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I like Mary Gordon, I guess I don't know if I like her, I like her writing.
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Almost finished this mammoth volume but not quite; ran out of renews at the library; but I greedily read as many stories as I could. My favorites: "Intertextuality," "Death in Naples," "The Epiphany Branch" from the new stories; "Temporary Shelter" from her earlier work. Such nuance, such care for texture (her attention to the wallpaper, for instance, reminds me of Vulliard's love for patterns -- one of Mike's favorite painters lately); such a quickly & fully created material world in her stories.
Gordon is no doubt a master, so my low-ish star rating has more to do with the reading experience of reading these stories back to back. She conveys a suspicion of all motives, especially those of do-gooders or people in helping professions -- much like Alice Munro, and with a similar worldly-wise feeling, but without the same love, or warmth; the underbelly of good works is such a vital theme, but it felt a little heavy-handed after awhile; also as in Munro's stories, there's the taboo of being a not-good girl -- a theme I love. Gordon's stories deal a lot with emotion, and writes it well, so the lack of warmth for me may be the NYC terrain (versus small town Ontario in Munro).
I might prefer Gordon in longer form; gives me time to care more and care as much as she demands that I care.
A section that struck me hard & bright:
"I don't know why I wasn't frightened of Mrs. Lynch; I was the sort of child to whom the slightest sign of irregularity might seem a menace. Now I can place her, having seen drawings by Hogarth, having learned words like harridan and slattern, which almost rhyme, having recorded, in the necessary course of feminist research, all those hateful descriptions of women gone to seed, or worse than seed, gone to some rank uncontrollable state where things sprouted and hung from them in a damp, lightless anarchy."
(317, from "The Neighborhood")
Gordon is no doubt a master, so my low-ish star rating has more to do with the reading experience of reading these stories back to back. She conveys a suspicion of all motives, especially those of do-gooders or people in helping professions -- much like Alice Munro, and with a similar worldly-wise feeling, but without the same love, or warmth; the underbelly of good works is such a vital theme, but it felt a little heavy-handed after awhile; also as in Munro's stories, there's the taboo of being a not-good girl -- a theme I love. Gordon's stories deal a lot with emotion, and writes it well, so the lack of warmth for me may be the NYC terrain (versus small town Ontario in Munro).
I might prefer Gordon in longer form; gives me time to care more and care as much as she demands that I care.
A section that struck me hard & bright:
"I don't know why I wasn't frightened of Mrs. Lynch; I was the sort of child to whom the slightest sign of irregularity might seem a menace. Now I can place her, having seen drawings by Hogarth, having learned words like harridan and slattern, which almost rhyme, having recorded, in the necessary course of feminist research, all those hateful descriptions of women gone to seed, or worse than seed, gone to some rank uncontrollable state where things sprouted and hung from them in a damp, lightless anarchy."
(317, from "The Neighborhood")
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wow this book was amazing. there were s many stories that were completely different from one another. my favorite story was called Separation. It was really sad. It was about a mother who realizes her kid is growing up and she knows he will be gone before she can blink twice. she doesn't want him to go but she knows he will be gone soon and there will be nothing she can do about it.
this story is like many parents stories. their kids grow up really fast even when they don't want them to. A lot of people have said to me "it was only yesterday that you were running around in dippers". this story is about that. its about a mothers baby fading before her own eyes. she doesn't want him to be gone but he slowly is leaving her.
in the story, the mother and child only found peace with each other. the little boy didn't get along with any of the other children and mother felt like she wasn't supposed to be there when she was around the other mothers at her kids daycare. they only felt happy around each other.
this also shows how hard it is to get people to accept you for who you really are. the main family wasn't as wealthy as the other families at the daycare. this shows how class matters to people and how upper class people prefer to be around other upper class people and how middle class people prefer to be around other middle class people and lastly how lower class people prefer to be around lower class people.
in a way, this story reminded me of Nikkie and Micha. there wasn't a man around in either of their families when there should have been, and they both had big bumps in their roads to becoming a happy well supported family. its kind of hard to explain how their families are alike but its easy to understand when you read the story. this was only one of the amazing stories in the stories of mary gordon.
this story is like many parents stories. their kids grow up really fast even when they don't want them to. A lot of people have said to me "it was only yesterday that you were running around in dippers". this story is about that. its about a mothers baby fading before her own eyes. she doesn't want him to be gone but he slowly is leaving her.
in the story, the mother and child only found peace with each other. the little boy didn't get along with any of the other children and mother felt like she wasn't supposed to be there when she was around the other mothers at her kids daycare. they only felt happy around each other.
this also shows how hard it is to get people to accept you for who you really are. the main family wasn't as wealthy as the other families at the daycare. this shows how class matters to people and how upper class people prefer to be around other upper class people and how middle class people prefer to be around other middle class people and lastly how lower class people prefer to be around lower class people.
in a way, this story reminded me of Nikkie and Micha. there wasn't a man around in either of their families when there should have been, and they both had big bumps in their roads to becoming a happy well supported family. its kind of hard to explain how their families are alike but its easy to understand when you read the story. this was only one of the amazing stories in the stories of mary gordon.
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