Wonderful writing. Some magnificent stories. Others good but not as geipping.

Mary Gordon’s stories deal with the travails of modern life – of individuals who grapple with the business of family, marriage, and identity.



Her protagonists are mostly women, Irish American, newly-displaced and carving a new identity at various stages of realising or witnessing and coming to terms with their American Dream falling to pieces, having a second go at their marriages, being disappointed with their children, etc.



Some characters that stand out for me include the well-meaning elderly widow who tries to cheerfully face the increasing irrelevance of her existence in ‘Death in Naples’, the efficient nun and principal who tolerates an incompetent teacher and find herself mistakenly playing out the role of friend and supporter despite her less noble intentions in ‘The Deacon’, and the long-suffering husband who holds onto a promise he made to his demented wife, despite his inability to cope with her deterioration in ‘Mrs Cassidy’s Last Year’.



Always graceful and written in careful, delicate strokes, Gordon’s stories will touch those that celebrate the honest and the frail but frustrate the cynical and those impatient with evidence of human weakness.

I came to love this long collection of many stories the more I read of it, in part because of the way in which the stories emerge from a single, ongoing habit of interrogation, an interrogation not only into human beings and their behaviors but into the act itself of writing about them... and in part, too, because of Gordon's vivid investment in the portraiture of an era (U.S.urban latter half of 20th century) and of a demographic (women, urban, left wing intellectuals not always so happy with the choices they've made, and eager to reckon with them.) The density of the prose is reflective of, and entirely organic to, the twists and turns made by the narrators' or protagonists' mixture of doubt and assertion; there is reciprocity between the syntax and the thought,in other words - one begets the other. I also like the feminist perspective and the paradox between it and the social realities at work in the stories. These are not high drama stories; the action is in the tension and release of the moment at hand

Forty-one stories with, I felt, only one central character or pov. This is not empirically true, but rather how I experienced the stories, although to be sure, there is a very consistent pov even if it's not as narrow as just one throughout all 41 stories. My purpose in focussing on this aspect of my reading experience is to explain how little I enjoyed the collection. I didn't like her "Catholic heterosexual mother/wife born in the 1940s". I didn't like her 41 times. I did finish the collection though, for the plots I suppose. The storytelling is crafty enough to carry one through 41 stories of one disliked character, so full props there.

She's a great writer, but the stories are a bit dark--not what I need right now (or ever! who does?). She is a fine writer though. The other thing is that there are many stories in the book--it was taking days to get through.

these stories are so incisive, so frighteningly close to my heart

they're sad, and intense, and full of people who don't know how to cope

and i couldn't really read 400 pages of that, so i read the first 3/4 and then gave up the ghost

Individually, these stories are brilliant gems. Each narrative character yearns for a sense of wholeness but is tainted in some surprising/horrific/human/unexpected way and cannot deal properly with the disappointments of life. Each story is a well realized and complex little vignette, showing family relationships and interpersonal dynamics from different perspectives and with a nice sense of completeness. This is particularly well done in the shortest of them, some of which were only a few pages long. Some stories also link back to each other, with different characters taking a starring role. As a rule, I love that. However, I found that some of the stories kind of ran together for me too much, and so when I would come across a recurring character it was a struggle to recollect what that character had been like in a previous story. (That may be due to the fact that I am feeling fairly stressed lately and have not been reading with as much attention as I ought.) As a group they seem to reveal the fragility of human connections and to declare that no family bond will ever be strong enough to save the individual from personal ruin. This is shown in a variety of familial constructs--sister to sister, mother to daughter, husband to wife, bosom friend to bosom friend, deacon to nun. Over and over these characters fail each other. They fail to recognize the essential nature of the lover/beloved and therefore fail to honor that nature and then all falls to shambles. It is perhaps not the best time for me to have read this book. I found it beautiful, intriguing, frightening, and depressing.

I read the first half of this book (Mary Gordon's unpublished stories) in October while I was living with my kids at my parents house (our house was being renovated). It was the perfect tone for a rather focused time. I put it aside when I reached the second half - her republished "Temporary Shelters" - I put it aside until just this week. When I picked it up this week the remainder of the book was a surprisingly quick read. I was glad I read this collection of stories but I did wish, by the end, for a few more grace notes. There was much I identified with with respect to the various women (despite note being either East coast or Catholic) - the first story of the collection included - but she often side steps those day to day events that can make living occasionally joyful.

Mary Gordon's stories deal with the travails of modern life - of individuals who grapple with the business of family, marriage, and identity.

Her protagonists are mostly women, Irish American, newly-displaced and carving a new identity at various stages of realising or witnessing and coming to terms with their American Dream falling to pieces, having a second go at their marriages, being disappointed with their children, etc.

Some characters that stand out for me include the well-meaning elderly widow who tries to cheerfully face the increasing irrelevance of her existence in `Death in Naples', the efficient nun and principal who tolerates an incompetent teacher and find herself mistakenly playing out the role of friend and supporter despite her less noble intentions in `The Deacon', and the long-suffering husband who holds onto a promise he made to his demented wife, despite his inability to cope with her deterioration in `Mrs Cassidy's Last Year'.

Always graceful and written in careful, delicate strokes, Gordon's stories will touch those that celebrate the honest and the frail but frustrate the cynical and those impatient with evidence of human weakness.

Most of these short stories are poignant and delve into sometimes uncomfortable topics. Gordon has an amazing vocabulary and you quickly get wrapped up in her characters, despite the brevity of each story.

Read this years ago....by one of my favorite authors

The ones that I liked I really, really liked:
*The Deacon
*Bishop's House
*The Epiphany Branch, narrated hilariously by a self-righteous library patron
*The Baby (my favorite), about the perils of mixing your friends and family
*Sick in London, about seeing things differently than your spouse
*Conversations in Prosperity, about the fear of being incapable of love