Winter's Tales: New Series (Winter's Tales) - Hardcover

Robin Baird-Smith

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 009470810X ISBN 13: 9780094708105

Publisher: Constable, 1991

Synopsis

Presents previously unpublished works by contemporary writers

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews

The eighth edition of this annual anthology is still cosmopolitan but also slighter and more meta-literary than previously. As before, however, the assortment of writers, mostly British, consists of the well-known as well as the relatively new. Muriel Spark offers ``The Girl I Left Behind Me,'' a sketch about a woman who lives in a boardinghouse and has a drudge of a job--the piece finishes with an abrupt surreal bang--and Chaim Potok's ``The Seven of the Address'' is a penetrating story about an old writer who has ``lost her way'': she journeys to a ``cell- like'' room in Israel to find her direction again by moving into mysticism. As almost always in Winter's Tales, Laura Kalpakian also puts in an appearance--here with ``Swann Song,'' a long, zany satire of a conglomerate that takes over a newspaper and of the fired journalists who fight back and win the day. Of the other pieces here: ``Sister Monica's Last Journey,'' by Richard Austin, tells of the odd journey of a dead nun to her resting place; ``Another Kind of Cinderella,'' by Angela Huth, subtly chronicles the travails of a violinist henpecked by his aging mother and lovelorn over a lesbian musician; ``The Death of Daffy Duck,'' by Peter Goldworthy, is about the decline of a friendship between two couples after one of the men chokes on his food and the other saves him. These are all good solid efforts, but the standouts are Will Self's ``The Indian Mutiny,'' about grade-school boys who force a teacher into a breakdown, and Monica Furlong's ``Carla, Cara,'' set in 1939, about Franz, an ‚migr‚ for whom Carla, a sort of Lady Brett Ashley in miniature, is a ``talisman warding off terror and grief and hatred and loss''--until she turns on him. Like the others, the general quality of these never-before- published stories is still high. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly

Less adventurous than recent editions of the popular annual series, this latest collection nevertheless contains several sparkling gems among its 11 stories. "Carla, Cara" by Monica Furlong shows adolescent love turning to tragedy as a homesick Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany falls for his reckless, sexually aggressive English cousin. Racial and class tensions simmer in Will Self's "The Indian Mutiny," the monologue of a guilt-ridden talk-show host who recalls how, as a rebellious pupil, he drove a Yorkshire teacher to suicide. "Sister Monica's Last Journey" by Richard Austin serves up garish comedy in its account of an unscrupulous travel agent foiling a dead nun's wish to be buried in her native Irish village. In a more serious vein, Muriel Sparks probes the horror at the heart of a secretary's empty life in "The Girl I Left Behind Me" and Argentine Juan Forn offers a glimpse of the afterlife in the piercingly beautiful "Swimming in the Dark," which shows a man conversing with his father's ghost. Chaim Potok, Angela Huth and Laura Kalpakian are among the other talents showcased in this richly eclectic sampler.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Constable
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 009470810X
• ISBN 13: 9780094708105
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304