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Three more mini reviews from Roald Dahl’s Book of Ghost Stories, edited by Roald Dahl.  I enjoyed all three!

“The Corner Shop” by Cynthia Asquith

A man goes into a corner shop on a foggy night and finds warmth and kindness from two sisters.  So much so that he wants to go back.  When he does, the shop is closed, but he finds a mysterious old man who lets him in.  He purchases a small object with some curious consequences.  This was a good one.

“In the Tube” by E. F. Benson

Just some quotes on this one:

Time indeed!  There’s no such thing as Time really; it has no actual existence.  Time is nothing more than infinitesimal point in eternity, just as space is an infinitesimal point in infinity.  At the most, Time is a sort of tunnel through which we are accustomed to believe that we are travelling.  There’s a roar in our ears and a darkness in our eyes which makes it seem real to us.  But before we came into the tunnel we existed for ever in an infinite sunlight, and after we have got through it we shall exist in an infinite sunlight again.

Say that a man commits some crime of violence, can we not, with a good deal of truth, say that he really commits that crime when he definitely plans and determines upon it, dwelling on it with gusto?  The actual commission of it, I think we can reasonably argue, is the mere material sequel of his resolve; he is guilty of it when he makes that determination.  When, therefore, in the term of ‘before’ and ‘after’, does the crime truly take place?   There is also in my story a further point for your consideration.  For it seems certain that the spirit of a man, after the death of his body, is obliged to re-enact such a crime, with a view, I suppose we may guess, to his remorse and his eventual redemption. [ ] Perhaps he may have done his deed blindly in this life; but then his spirit recommits it with its spiritual eyes open, and able to comprehend its enormity.  So, shall we view the man’s original determination and the material commission of this crime only as preludes to the real commission of it, when with eyes unsealed he does it and repents of it?

“Christmas Meeting” by Rosemary Timperley

An older woman and an aspiring young author keep each other company at Christmas.  Good, and only 3 pages!

I read the first two stories of this book back in May and enjoyed them very much.  You can read my review of those two here.

The third and fourth stories of The Secrets of a Fire King are equally good.  I was particularly fascinated by “A Gleaming in the Darkness.”

“A Gleaming in the Darkness” is about two Maries.  One is a cleaning woman for a university, and the other is the famous scientist, Marie Curie.  (To avoid confusion, I’ll refer to the cleaning woman as Marie and the scientist as Curie.)  While Marie cleans for and waits on Madame Curie, she is enthralled by Curie’s intelligence, will, stamina, and persistence.  She defends her against her detractors and admires her work exceedingly.  The story is told through flashbacks of Marie’s memories, while the aged Marie is in the hospital during World War II.   Maybe you have to be a science geek like me to really appreciate this story, but I absolutely loved this one.  I also loved the perspective of age looking back on youth.

They do not believe that their unlined skin, their smooth and agile limbs, will ever fall into such a state of disrepair as mine have done.  They are sorry for my disabilities, my old age, my dying, and they pity me.  They do not see I have no pity for myself.  The young girls do not know it, and I cannot tell them, but I have discovered that past and present blur together, become one and the same, so that time means very little at the end.

“Balance” is about an aging couple, Marc and Francoise who perform a small circus-type show in the park at small cities. This one also deals with the loss of youth, but, unlike in the above story, the characters show great reluctance to the aging process. Once with perfect bodies, the tiniest decrease in abilities is perceived as a huge challenge for them, particularly because Francoise is a trapeze artist.

If I ever slipped…I could never do it again. I have to believe that it’s impossible for me to fall.

I really encourage you to pick up this book of stories by Kim Edwards. I’ve seen it at in the Bargain Books section of both Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

I picked this book for the RIP III Challenge, and I also thought I’d use it for Short Story September.  I’ve enjoyed the first two stories of the book so far.

“W.S.” by L.P. Hartley

Walter Streeter is a novelist who begins receiving postcards from a fan.  The postcards are signed with the initials W.S.  At first the notes are very complimentary, but it appears the fan might be stalking him as W.S. admits he is coming nearer and nearer to Walter with each postcard.   This alarms Walter and he notifies the police, who at first don’t seem to be interested in the case and assure him it is probably a hoax.  Later, they agree to provide him with police protection, and there is a policeman who arrives at the door, but…

“Harry” by Rosemary Timperley

A little girl begins to have an imaginary friend the summer before she goes off to school.  At first her parents don’t think anything about it, but then they become increasingly more alarmed at their daughter’s insistence that Harry is real.

“Such ordinary things make me afraid.  Sunshine.  Sharp shadows on grass.  White roses.  Children with red hair.  And the name — Harry.  Such an ordinary name.”

I’m really looking forward to reading more of the stories in this collection!

I got sidetracked on my Carol Shields short stories. Although I do plan on finishing the book before the end of the year, I won’t make it by the end of June to count it for the Canadian Challenge. I’ll just use it for Canadian Challenge #2 and substitute something else for the first Canadian Challenge.

I have started on another book of short stories that I’m excited about. I’ve read the first two stories in The Secrets of a Fire King by Kim Edwards, and I enjoyed both of them very much.

“The Great Chain of Being” is about the power of a person’s name. If a person’s name is changed to one with a good meaning (or a bad meaning), does it change who the person is inside? When Eshlaini’s brothers and sisters are all given a special name by their father, she wants one, too — until one is given to her that brings her dishonor. Can she rise above the stigma her new name brings? I loved this one!

“Spring, Mountain, Sea” are actually the names of the three children of an American man and an Asian woman — I think she was Vietnamese. This story chronicles the lives of the couple and how they deal with others’ prejudice of her background and also how Jade Moon battles with her isolation, loneliness, and homesickness. This one was also very good.

This book’s writing has pleasantly surprised me. I hope to write about 2-3 stories from it each week on Mondays.

Finished three more stories from Shields this week.

Just some quotes:

“Taking the Train”

Later, she came to see happiness as something chancy and unreliable, a flash of light beating at the edge of a human eye or a tin piece of glass to be carried secretly inside her head.

Home

By some extraordinary coincidence (or cosmic dispensation or whatever), each person on the London-bound flight that night was, for a moment, filled with the steam of perfect happiness. Whether it was the oxygen-enriched air of the fusiform cabin, or the duckling with orange sauce, or the souffle-soft buttocks of the stewardess sashaying to and for with her coffeepot, or the unchartable currents of air bouncing against the sides of the vessel, or some random thought dredged out of the darkness of the aircraft and fueled by the proximity of strangers — whatever it was, each of the one hundred passengers — one after another, from rows one to twenty-five, like little lights going on — experienced an intense, simultaneous sensation of joy. They were for that moment swimmers riding a single wave, tossed upward by infection or clairvoyance or a slant of perception uniquely heightened by an accident of altitude.

The Journal

Since it is close to five o’clock, they’re beginning to gather in small cafes and bars and ’salons du the’ in order to treat themselves to glasses of wine or beer or perhaps small cups of bitter espresso. A ‘quotidian quaff’ is the tickling phrase that pops into Harold’s head, and it seems to him there is not one person in all of Reims, in all of France for that matter, who is not now happily seated in some warm public corner and raising pleasing liquids to his lips. He experiences a nudge of grief because he does not happen to live in a country where people gather publicly at this hour to sip drinks and share anecdotes and debate ideas.

Still reading Carol Shields’ stories; I’m about 1/3 of the way through the book. This week I read the following four:

“A Wood” – written with her daughter, Anne Giardini. I liked this one quite a bit and thought it could have had the potential to become a novella; in fact, I wanted more when I finished reading. The story is about three Wood siblings and the guilt they share about the death of their domineering father. Ross is the overly-critical brother, while Stanley is perhaps a bit too accepting. Elke is the eccentric concert violinist who even composes her own music. The dynamic of the three felt real, and I definitely wanted to know more about their father, who was known to say things such as:

• A Wood will only settle for standards of excellence.
• A Wood asks more of himself than he asks of others.
• A Wood knows that work is the least despised of human activities.
• A Wood values accomplishment above all.

“Love so Fleeting, Love so Fine” – A strange story about a married man who invents stories in his head about the women whose names appear on signs and slogans.

“Dolls, Dolls, Dolls, Dolls” – A woman recalls her childhood attachment to dolls.

I knew she was lifeless, knew there was no heart fluttering in her soft chest and no bravery in her hollow head. None of it was real, none of it.

Only her power to protect me. Human love, I saw, could not always be relied upon. There would be times when I would have to settle for a kind of parallel love, an extension of my hidden self, hidden even from me.

“Invitations” – A woman receives multiple invitations to events on a Saturday evening. Instead she chooses to stay home with Mansfield Park.

Clearly she was lost in what she was reading, for she never once glanced up. Her look of solitary containment and the oblique angle with which the light struck the left side of her face made her seem piercingly lovely. One of her hands, curved like a comma, lay on her lap; the other, slowly, thoughtfully, turned over the pages.

This was a great story to end on. I always look forward to my moments with Shields.

I thought that today I’d just share some lines from each of the stories I read this past week. I’m still reading from The Collected Stories of Carol Shields.

“Poaching” – A couple likes to pick up hitchhikers and listen to their life stories.

Behind each of the people we pick up, Dobey believes, there’s a deep cave, and in the cave is a trap door and a set of stone steps that we may descend if we wish. I say to Dobey that there may be nothing at the bottom of the stairs, but Dobey says, how will we know if we don’t look.

“Scenes” – Scenes from a woman named Frances’s life.

These are just some of the scenes in Frances’s life. She thinks of them as scenes because they’re much too fragmentary to be stories and far too immediate to be memories. They seem to bloom out of nothing, out of the thin, uncolored air of defeats and pleasures. A curtain opens, a light appears, there are voices or music or sometimes a wide transparent stream of silence. Only rarely do they point to anything but themselves. They’re difficult to talk about. They’re useless, attached to nothing, can’t be traded in or shaped into instruments to prise open the meaning of the universe.

There are people who think such scenes are ornaments suspended from lives that are otherwise busy and useful. Frances knows perfectly well that they are what a life is made of, one fitting against the next like English paving stones.

“Fragility” – A couple prepares to relocate a few years after their son died.

Our plane seems a fragile vessel, a piece of jewelry up here between the stars and the mountains. Flying through dark air like this makes me think that life itself is fragile. The miniature accidents of chromosomes can spread unstoppable circles of grief. A dozen words carelessly uttered can dismantle a marriage. A few gulps of oxygen are all that stand between us and death.

“The Metaphor is Dead–Pass It On” – A professor’s discourse on language.

“The metaphor is dead,” bellowed the gargantuan professor, his walrus mustache dancing and his thundery eyebrows knitting together rapaciously. “Those accustomed to lunching at the high table of literature will now be able to nosh at the trough on a streamlined sub minus the pickle. Banished is that imperial albatross, that dragooned double agent, that muddy mirror lit by the false flashing signal like and by that even more presumptuous little sugar lump as. The gates are open, and the prisoner, freed of his shackles, has departed without so much as a goodbye wave to those who would take a simple pomegranate and insist it be the universe.”

This one goes on to talk about other grammar topics in a similar manner. I’m not sure what it all meant, but I did enjoy it!