Big as Life: Three Tales for Spring - Hardcover

Howard, Maureen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 067089978X ISBN 13: 9780670899784

Publisher: Viking Adult, 2001

Synopsis

The sequel to the critically acclaimed A Lover's Almanac presents three short stories of moral resonance and magical enchantment that are integrated by the feeling of regeneration that marks the coming of spring, in "Children with Matches," "The Magdalene," and "Big as Life: A Story in Three Panels." 15,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Maureen Howard is the author of seven novels, including Grace Abounding, Expensive Habits, and Natural History, all of which were nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award. She has taught at a number of American universities, including Columbia, Princeton, Amherst, and Yale, and was recently awarded the Academy Award in Literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in New York City.

Reviews

With a sharpshooter's eye and brilliantly attuned sensibility, Howard considers the implications of the spring season in the second in a projected series of works (after A Lover's Almanac) inspired by the natural world. In tensile, beautifully articulated prose, she reveals the souls of people who reflect on renewal and redemption in three richly conveyed settings. In the "April" section, a young woman inherits the house where she lived for a while as a child with two eccentric maiden aunts and brooded in a secluded turret. Ruminating on her ancestors and the play of nature in their lives, the adult Marie Claude also muses on her own life and the future of a new relationship. A rich, elegiac tone pervades "May." Nell Boyle, an 18-year-old Irish beauty with secret shames and hidden sins, is sent to live with her wealthy cousins in America and becomes a wary observer of their dysfunctional family. Watching as her innocent young cousin Mae's burgeoning religious fervor is squelched by the reserved, upper-crust Boyles, Nell contrasts the adult Mae's conventional but heartbreakingly empty existence with her own unhappy past. In the tripartite "June" section, Howard examines the sacrifices required by passionate commitment. The extraordinary life of nature artist John James Audubon is seen through the eyes of his long-suffering wife, Lucy. "Salvino" revisits Artie and Louise, from A Lover's Almanac, again reflecting the interplay of nature against a background of academia in its most political incarnation. The final panel, "Myself," is a crisp quasi-memoir, revealing Howard's own "landscape of memory" of the flora and fauna that had a significant impact on her imagination. Howard's language is fresh and energetic, her metaphors luminous. Her narrative method filtered vignettes, shadowy implications, layers of complexities, delayed explanations results in challenging, adventurous literary fiction. Agent, Gloria Loomis.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

As in Natural History (1992) and A Lover's Almanac (1998), Howard freely draws characters from both real life and her imagination, playfully subverts narrative expectations, and ponders humankind's relationship to the natural world, but never before has she so seamlessly melded intellectual inquisitiveness with lyricism. These three subtly linked, brilliant, and enchanting tales bridge the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and embody the essence of spring: the renewal of life and the fleetingness of youth. Using fairy tales as an armature--a lost child who comes upon a cottage deep in the woods, for example--each novella examines a family, a quest, and wildly divergent yet simultaneous worlds. In "Children with Matches," a history professor unexpectedly inherits her family's dilapidated estate, while her lover, a famous economist, fears for his life in war-warped Africa. A young Irish woman's beauty brings her nothing but grief until she finds her calling as an army nurse in World War II, in "The Magdalene." And Audubon and his long-suffering wife are the subjects of the title story, a richly modulated work in which Howard considers Audubon's fanatic efforts to make the wild yield its secrets and civilization bestow its gifts while his family suffers every deprivation. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

The second installment in Howard's cycle of fictions based on the four seasons, this work revolves around awakening and the urge to go forward. The first story in this challenging if beautifully written collection is "Children with Matches," in which Marie Claude, recounts her strange childhood. Complete with eccentric aunts and a housewith a mysterious and sometimes scary tower, it is the stuff of magic, but Howard's frequent, mercurial flights between time frames and characters sometimes leave the reader confused. In the second story, the beautiful but besmirched Nell is sent from Ireland to live with relatives who have little patience with her, but Nell takes charge and goes forward. Again, Howard's use of language is incredible, but the seemingly excessive entanglement of so many plotlines disrupts the narrative's flow. The third story is about John James Audubon, who suffered no obstacles in his quest for success. This is followed by the author's thoughts on her relationship to nature and a modern couple's search for spiritual balance; the connections to Audubon are tenuous. Though Howard's language is often enjoyable, the stories themselves lack cohesion. For larger collections. Patricia Gulian, South Portland, ME
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Viking Adult
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 067089978X
• ISBN 13: 9780670899784
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 225