The Woman at the Window - Hardcover

Eldridge, Marian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 186340239X ISBN 13: 9781863402392

Publisher: Bolinda Pub Inc

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From Publishers Weekly

In these 16 adeptly told tales, Australian writer Eldridge ( Walking the Dog ) lures readers to find hidden meaning in everyday events, then jocularly mocks us for doing precisely that. In "A Love Story," for instance, Philip and his girlfriend Alvie, on an Italian vacation, are enchanted by a man selling a flying toy pigeon. To Philip the wonderful moment "means more than itself"--until he learns that the man is an exploited worker. Several stories follow the relationship of these two appealing characters, from its heady beginning in "Primavera," to its end in "Capital Gains," in which Philip is "that name" that cannot be uttered in front of Alvie. Social concerns rise to the fore in "A Sense of Place" when a woman visiting Pretoria becomes decidedly uncomfortable with its divided society. In "Outside the Silver Dory," a divorced father tries to inveigle the two sons with whom he now has little in common. The subject of the title story is a poor single mother who secretly hopes for a tragedy to relieve her of the responsibility she is ill equipped to handle.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This second collection of short stories by Australian Eldridge depicts Australians traveling abroad, at home in the suburbs, or settling the Australian desert. Several suburban stories prove that, although adolescent angst and acne are the same the world over, Eldridge has an original way of dealing with such universal themes. Elsewhere we meet Lloyd, who is running a camp set up to resettle natives in the desert: "Lloyd doesn't have a grand scheme. Just the day to day business of doing the sked, doing the paperwork, fixing a tap. . . . " Eldridge deals with the differences between cultures, with the way the white man regards the "blackfeller" and the black man regards the "whitefeller." Like Lloyd, she doesn't go for grand schemes but sticks to the everyday, creating an authentic world readers must judge for themselves. Some of the stories are very short, but all hold the reader's attention.
- Marcia Tager, Tenafly, N.J.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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