Throughout these stories, the reader becomes hypnotized by the succession of Bolano’s images, by the lives he depicts (including his own in the two essays), and by the metaphysical suggestions and possible symbols of his stories, despite the fact that Bolano does not make grand pronouncements or create a formal, organized, and ultimately hopeful view of life as other authors do. There is no coherence to our lives, he seems to say: chaos rules. Although artists of all kinds try to make some sense of life, Bolano suggests that their visions may not be accurate since they have no way of knowing or conveying the whole story, the big picture, the inner secrets of life. He himself avoids such suggestions of order in life. Vibrant and imaginative, Bolano’s stories seduce the reader into and coming back to them again and again looking for answers or explanations that often remain tantalizingly out of reach.
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Last week, if someone had told me that I’d be able to take only one book of short stories with me on a long trip to a desert island, I’d have looked first at all the powerful and intriguing stories by Andre Dubus II. Then I’d have thought about the stories of John Updike, another favorite story writer, pausing for a long time over the volume which contains “Pigeon Feathers,” one of my favorite stories. Today, however, I’d be gravitating toward this book, completely different from any collection of stories I’ve ever read, a volume containing so much variety and color in its subject matter, so many overlapping themes, such strange and ultimately intriguing characters (who peek in at various points throughout the book and revisit us in new stories throughout), and so much fascinating discussion about the nature of stories and story-writing that ultimately, I’d probably choose this one for the island trip. The Dubus and Updike collections are among the best in the world, but on my desert island I think I’d want the stimulation, excitement, humor, uniqueness, and, especially, the sense of wonder that are all contained in this one volume.
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Gardam is a master at observing human nature, and as she incorporates her thoughtful observations into these clever and compulsively readable stories, the irreverent attitudes toward life, which many of her characters take too seriously, and the awareness of life’s absurdities, which most of her characters do not notice at all, create a collection which is great fun to read and illuminating in its insights. Her humor, dark as it is, keeps even the most poignant scenes from devolving into bathos, and her sense of play allows the reader to laugh along with her, even while identifying with many of her sad characters. A wonderful introduction to the wry delights of Gardam for anyone who has not already discovered her unforgettable and beautifully wrought novels.
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Published by Random House of South Africa, The Hero of Currie Road presents two kinds of stories. About half of them are about individual boys under Alan Paton’s care at the reformatory–sensitive and insightful tales about young teenagers at crossroads, often inspired to lead honorable lives but without the ability, always, to make the right choices. The second group of stories is about the white world, mostly adults, who reflect the ingrained attitudes of apartheid which have permanently limited the attitudes, aspirations, and achievements of the native majority population–and which Paton sometimes despairs of ever changing. All the stories from his first collection, Debbie Go Home (known as Tales from a Trouble Land in the US), from 1961, are included here, as are the stories from his 1975 collection, Knocking on the Door. Together they show Alan Paton in his most personal, most revealing moments, in which he frankly states opinions that he cannot make in his novels, a form for which “the inexorable rule is that you must put your story first, not your politics or religion or your anger about the Group Areas Act.” (To read the entire review, click on the title of this excerpt.)
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