Beauty and the beauty shop
We've visited the new location enough that it's starting to stay in my mother's memory. Having the fellow from the old shop come up and say "ciao" to her in his unidentifiable accent - I think he is Swiss, and speaks a few languages - and ask after her in his courtly manner helps. It's a quiter place, which I appreciate if I sit and wait. No extremely loud ladies of a certain age blaring on about brain tumors and such.
Kiran Desai's novel The Inheritance of Loss is quite good. It garnered a decent review in the recent New York Review of Books. I was a bit concerned it would be one of those "international fiction" exercises that are sometimes awful, but it was original and intelligent. E.B. White is reported to have answered, when questioned about his stories' sources, "Oh, I never look under the hood." I got a sense of that from Desai's book. Now I'm reading a collection of Carol Shields' short stories. She was born and reared in Chicago, but lived most of her life in Canada. Died a few years ago of cancer. I'm liking the short stories better than the novel of hers I read, The Stone Diaries.
Kiran Desai's novel The Inheritance of Loss is quite good. It garnered a decent review in the recent New York Review of Books. I was a bit concerned it would be one of those "international fiction" exercises that are sometimes awful, but it was original and intelligent. E.B. White is reported to have answered, when questioned about his stories' sources, "Oh, I never look under the hood." I got a sense of that from Desai's book. Now I'm reading a collection of Carol Shields' short stories. She was born and reared in Chicago, but lived most of her life in Canada. Died a few years ago of cancer. I'm liking the short stories better than the novel of hers I read, The Stone Diaries.
posted by isabelita at 2:07 PM
3 Comments:
I never read The Stone Diaries, I don't think, but did read her last one, Unless. If I were still in bookgroup, I would have given it a 6 or a 7. She writes some lovely prose, but the plot and ending of that one were pretty inconceivable.
I tried reading The Stone Diaries, but could not make it through. Maybe I should check out the short stories-- smaller doses might do the trick.
Haven't read Unless, kathy. But her short stories are pretty danged good.
Robin, my residual memory of The Stone Diaries isn't exactly positive, but the short fiction is all right.
Have you read any stuff by Robert Stone? I read a review of his recent memoir in the NYRB, and am kind of intrigued...
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