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Title: Kiss Me Again, Stranger
Author: Daphne du Maurier
ISBN: 0671753282
Publisher: Avon Books/1972
Pages: 318
Kiss Me Again, Stranger is a collection of eight short stories by Daphne du Maurier. Those short stories are suspenseful with that edgy mystery element and haunt the reader long after finishing the stories. Those stories manage that elusive element keeping us on tenterhooks. Very tight, compelling and with realist portrayal, one can even envision it happening.
~ Kiss Me Again, Stranger is about a young man meeting a girl in a movie theatre and befriends her. He falls in love with her and then discovers some unpleasant truth about her.
~ The Birds is about birds trying to destroy humankind. Hitchcock based his movie on this story.
~ The Little Photographer is about a Marquise who despite fame and money finds herself lonely and decides to take a lover at the fag end.
~ Monte Verita can be rightfully termed as a novella and has many twists and tturns as only a love triangle can have. With well developed characters, it takes us into a journey which covers many years.
~ The Apple Tree is about a rich landlord who wishes for the old apple tree on his property to be chopped off, after his wife who has been long neglected, dies. For some reason he senses that it represents his dead wife. The apples taste bitter to him although those taste just fine for others
~ The Old Man is about a family whose old neighbour keeps an eye on them. He knows some secret about his neighbour and they always feel his eyes on them.
~ The Split Second is about a woman and the her daughter. They seem to have a comoplicated relationship. The suspense is mantained and we can see the depth of of du Maurier's writing.
~ No Motive is a murder mystery and despite the shortness, can totally engross the reader..
With her signature style, du Maurier captivates the reader with the irony and very realistic depiction of human quirks. Notwithstanding gender, social strata or moods or intentions. Some might find thse short stories dark and disturbing but that ought not deter them to read her books.
That house in Manawaka is the one which, more than any other, I carry with me. Known to the rest of the town as "the old Connor place" and to the family as the Brick House, it was plain as the winter turnips in its root cellar, sparsely windowed as some crusader's embattled fortress in a heathen wilderness, its rooms in a perpetual gloom except in the brief height of summer.
Title: A Bird in the House
Author: Margaret Laurence
ISBN: 0771099851
Publisher: M&S/1970
Pages: 191
A Bird in the House can be read both as short story collection or a novel as the short stories are interconnected and yet stand alone. The stories speak of childhood, and girlhood very beautifully, depicting, pathos, wonder and also the joys of growing up.
The protagonist Vanessa MacLeod, is a keen observer and she is attuned to everything that is connected to her. This books speaks of family love, duty and the pain of death too. The conflict too is shown in a very fine way. When Vanessa's father dies suddenly due to flu, she misses him terribly and doesn't know how to cope with her grief. Her relationship with her Grandfather Connor is interesting. He is forceful, dominating yet a steady force. No one expects him to die all of a sudden although he is ninety-four.
With plenty of interesting observations, Vanessa manages to tell us so much about Manakawa. Despite liking the book, I find it hard to review it. Each and every character has a place in the book and are necessary for Vanessa's growing up phase. This book starts when she is 9 years old and finishes when she is around 40 years of age. Vanessa's narration is filled with interesting snippets and beautuful poignant emotions.
Book 1 of The Canadian Book Challenge 3
Guy de Maupassant in not unknown in the reading cirle. His short stories must have been read by one and all and at one time or the other. I have read almost all of his works and the endings are always twisted. They can be interpreted in various ways but not the way one has expected them to. However, I don't hear about him in this blog world. Today I thought I would showcase him. I found a few of his stories online and chose to re-read Yvette after say 20 years.
Yvette is about a girl who is already dead at the start of the story. The narrator is talking to someone he knows about as Comtesse. Comtesse Samoris, who has killed her own daughter, Yvette.
"The comtesse is nothing but a common, ordinary parvenue originating no one knows where. A Hungarian or Wallachian countess or I know not what. She appeared one winter in apartments she had taken in the Champs Elysees, that quarter for adventurers and adventuresses, and opened her drawing-room to the first comer or to any one that turned up."
"Madame Samoris is the type of these adventuresses, elegant, mature and still beautiful. Charming feline creatures, you feel that they are vicious to the marrow of their bones. You find them very amusing when you visit them; they give card parties; they have dances and suppers; in short, they offer you all the pleasures of social life.
She had a daughter who was just the opposite, a simple, virtuous girl, who wasn't aware of her mother's loose morals. One day she overheard her some people talking about the mother and her numerous men friends. Yvette confronted her and teld her that at the end of the month, they should retreat to an unknown village and lead a unsullied life or she will kill herself. The Comtesse disregarded this.
"At the end of a month the Comtesse Samoris had resumed her usual entertainments, as though nothing had occurred. One day, under the pretext that she had a bad toothache, Yvette purchased a few drops of chloroform from a neighboring chemist. The next day she purchased more, and every time she went out she managed to procure small doses of the narcotic. She filled a bottle with it."
And one day she didn't wake up. She was dead as she had claimed. The mother shed a few tears and resumed her old ways.
And what about the girl's death?
"Oh! they pretended that it was an accident caused by a new stove, the mechanism of which got out of order. As a good many such accidents have Occurred, the thing seemed probable enough."
Guy de Maupassant needs to be rediscovered because he was one of the greatest story tellers of all times.
And don't forget to check out:
Short Story Sunday hosted by CB James
Short Story Monday hosted by John Mutford
Title: Tea and Other Ayama Na Tales
Author: Eleanor Bluestein
ISBN: 9781886157644
Publisher: BkMk Press/2009
Pages: 234
It is collection of ten short stories taking place in a fictitious south Asian country. Ayama Na is totally devastated from an internal coup, drought and corruption at every level. Citizens are trying to cope with the devastations left behind and do their best to rebuild their country where peace seems like an fragile commodity. Land mines still dot it and amputees are all over the place.
Each story deals with some aspect of it in one way or the other. Ordinary people are caught between the traditional values and the rapid spread westernization. Yet each one of them wishes peace, prosperity and growth for their country and would like to contribute toward it in any way they can.
In Pineapple Wars, Koriatt is a Car Salesman, who has left the pineapple fields to work in the city of Pin Dalie. He is fairly successful. His eighty year old father is still alive, living in the pineapple farms, Koriatt and his sister are not ready to take care of him. Koriatt has no wish to get his father to the city and his sister is not ready to live with the father in the village. Both squabble over it. Korriat finds a solution to their dilemma which is shocking...
Hamburger School has school students working in the joint for pocket money or to escape their life at home. AIBO or Love at First Sight has Dali-Roo working in factory that makes robots. He, like most others is forced to work there because of the droughts. His parched fields cannot yield anything. Dali-Roo is obssessed with building a robot for himself and ends up stealing electronic stuff. And his friend helps him not getting caught.
Skin Deep has an educated girl aspiring to be the Miss Ayama Na. She is prepared for that by her manager but somehow ends up telling the truth on the stage instead of platitudes. The Artist's Story has an one legged prostitute rooting for the artist, who is an American lost in Ayama Na. He does not wish to return to his own country. And somehow has found freedom in a country which seems to be filled with strife.
The Cut the Crap Machine has two playwright collaborating to write a master piece. One is very old and the other is young and arrogant. Yet they need each other. The play is confusing as both try to write scenes in their own ways. In a way it speaks of the dilemma of that modern versus traditional.
The Blanks has a couple from US visiting Ayama Na for sightseeing. Both apparantly can't stand each other and yet cannot live without each other. They are simply not interested to see the country. Their guide has a tough time dealing with them. He knows, their country needs the revenue brought by the tourists. I found A Ruined World most touching of all. It has two sisters who are always fighting. Each has a child, a son and daughter. Those two children are very fond of each other. The Shaman of their tribe discovers a body of a child and summons everyone to watch its cremation. When the younger sister finds out the murderer and the reasons behind it, she is devastated..
North of the Faro has a fortune teller who predictions go wrong. She leaves her home and becomes a wanderer. Only then she can understand her inner compulsions. And finally realises where she has to go. Tea has a seventeen year old girl seeking her brother's support to talk to their father who wishes for her to meet a boy which might lead to marrying that person. Her brother makes her come to a place where they serve tea according to the mood of the customer. She goes there for five days and although her brother doesn't say a word, she understands her own conflicts and is ready to meet the boy.
Each story encapsulates tiny lives. Although fictitious, it could have been in any place like Thailand, Nepal, Singapore or even India. In all those place Traditonal exist with Modern, conflicts are abound and yet we have to find the middle path. The stories are not at all sad or serious. They touch the seriousness of life yet with wit, wisdom and enlightenment. The story do end differently from what we expect.
The author has great imagination, she has made the fictitious place and people come alive. The names are hoots too. Although none of stories are connected in anyway yet there is a connection. Those who wish to read something out of their comfort zone, I would recommend it.
Also reviewed by:
Meghan
The Bluestocking Society
Bookstack
Nerd’s Eye View
Lotus Reads
8Asians
1979 Semi-finalist…
Ramya’s Bookshelf
Feminist Review
Trish’s Reading Nook
Savvy Verse and Wit
Watch this place for a guest post and Author Interview with Eleanor Bluestein. Thanks Eleanor for the book!
I found Landscape With Flatiron by Haruki Murakami online.
Junko had run away from home on her third year in High School from Tokorozawa to this little seaside spot in Ibaraki Prefecture. She was working in a convenience store on coast highway.
To her mother she wrote: Don’t worry about me, and please don’t look for me, I’m doing fine.
After sometime she found another drifter Keisuke who was two years older. He to wasn't interested in studies neither did he want to join his family business. They had a sweet shop. Keisuke wished for an easy life. He was a great surfer. Junko moved in with him. After a while, she met Miyake, a painter of sorts in his 40s. He had a Kansai dialect and hence was noticed by most. He kept his life private and did not interact with most.
A friendship develops between Miyake and Junko. He can light great bonfires and Ibaraki had driftwoods coming in plenty, so he had settled there only for those. Junko loved going to those bonfires. KIesuke accompanied her most of the times.
One day in the midst of bonfire, Keisuke leaves for home leaving her alone with Miyake. Junko feels some sort of bond with him but Miyake is noncommital. THey talk about his latest painting which is an iron in a room and is called landscape with flatiron. He does not explain what it means.
“I call it Landscape with Flatiron. I finished it three days ago. It’s just a picture of an iron in a room.”
“Why’s that so tough to explain?”
“Because it’s not really an iron.”
She looked up at him. “The iron is not an iron?”
“That’s right.”
“Meaning it stands for something else?”
“Probably.”
“Meaning you can only paint it if you use something else to stand for it?”
Miyake nodded in silence.
She falls asleep against him and tells him to wake her when the fire goes out. He answers:
“Don’t worry. When the fire goes out, you’ll start feeling the cold. You’ll wake up whether you want to or not.”
I found all three characters drifters in their own ways. They had longings but were not aware of those. All feel some kind of emptiness which isn't fulfilled. Maybe the flatiron in a room, symbolises that.
Do check out Landscape With Flatiron by Haruki Murakami
Most must have read The Ugly Duckling. I re-read it from the Fairy Tales by Hans Anderson. However, you can read it online by clicking on the title.
A duck is happy that her eggs have hatched and she loves watching her duckling frolicking and playing around. But one of the eggs is still there unhatched. She sits on it again and from there emerges a duckling so ugly that no one likes him at all. Poor duckling is pushed, bitten and bullied around even by his siblings. No one comes in his defense, not even his mother, who wishes he was never borne.
The poor duckling was driven about by every one; even his brothers and sisters were unkind to him, and would say, “Ah, you ugly creature, I wish the cat would get you,” and his mother said she wished he had never been born. The ducks pecked him, the chickens beat him, and the girl who fed the poultry kicked him with her feet. So at last he ran away, frightening the little birds in the hedge as he flew over the palings.
He leaves his home and flies into a large moor. Even there he is not treated well. One day he sees a flock of Swans, so beautiful and graceful. Somehow he feels a kinship with them.
He knew not the names of these birds, nor where they had flown, but he felt towards them as he had never felt for any other bird in the world. He was not envious of these beautiful creatures, but wished to be as lovely as they. Poor ugly creature, how gladly he would have lived even with the ducks had they only given him encouragement.
Then one winter unable to swim in the frozen river, he is almost frozen to death when a kind peasant picks him up and takes him home thawing him. And so it went on, he barely surving the winters and longing to be with other birds including the ducks.
It would be very sad, were I to relate all the misery and privations which the poor little duckling endured during the hard winter; but when it had passed, he found himself lying one morning in a moor, amongst the rushes. He felt the warm sun shining, and heard the lark singing, and saw that all around was beautiful spring. Then the young bird felt that his wings were strong, as he flapped them against his sides, and rose high into the air. They bore him onwards, until he found himself in a large garden, before he well knew how it had happened. The apple-trees were in full blossom, and the fragrant elders bent their long green branches down to the stream which wound round a smooth lawn. Everything looked beautiful, in the freshness of early spring. From a thicket close by came three beautiful white swans, rustling their feathers, and swimming lightly over the smooth water. The duckling remembered the lovely birds, and felt more strangely unhappy than ever.
He flew out into the sky and found swans coming towards him. He bent his head asking them to kill him. But what did he see in the water below, a bird so beautiful.
But what did he see in the clear stream below? His own image; no longer a dark, gray bird, ugly and disagreeable to look at, but a graceful and beautiful swan. To be born in a duck’s nest, in a farmyard, is of no consequence to a bird, if it is hatched from a swan’s egg. He now felt glad at having suffered sorrow and trouble, because it enabled him to enjoy so much better all the pleasure and happiness around him; for the great swans swam round the new-comer, and stroked his neck with their beaks, as a welcome.
The Ugly Duckling had become a beautiful swan, so graceful and so elegant. But pride did not touch him. He was filled with happiness and wonder.
In a world where beauty is given so much importance, ugly has no place. It does not matter that the ugly creature might have a heart of gold. Everyone turns against them and survival becomes a struggle. The Ugly Duckling tells us that it need not be so. One can become a swan, if not in appearance then in deed. And humility still counts.
James Lincoln Tasker thought he'd understood Judge O'Herlihy when he'd said "hanged by the neck until you are dead, dead, dead." He just had no idea that the last part was going to take so long. Yet here he was, still swinging at the end of a hangman's noose in the shadow of the courthouse and not even feeling sleepy.
I read Let Him Dangle by Richard Dickson online. It is a very short story in or around 500 words.
James has been left to die after having hanged but he does not die in a hurry. He is shown to converse with the sheriff. He wants to die quickly but is left dangling.
The sheriff turned towards him, and Tasker wished he hadn't. Maggots crawled in hollow eyes, and a grin like a whip stretched his pale skin tightly over the hard lines of the skull beneath. Flies burst from his mouth along with a harsh, piercing laugh.
"Oh, I think you just got your damnation," he cackled, and vanished. The town shimmered away along with the sheriff, and only the squat, grunting shapes approaching over the bleak, sun-baked plain remained to hear the screams that would be James Lincoln Tasker's song for eternity.
He gets his wish but in what manner?
After a long time two boys are playing near an old Oak tree, its branches all gnarled and one branch hanging out.
And Michael could have sworn he heard it scream.
This short story is power-packed , taut and fast paced. But how else a 500 words story would be? I am glad I found this site.
"Chika climbs in through the store window first and then holds the shutter as the woman climbs in after her. The store looks as if it was deserted long before the riots started; the empty rows of wooden shelves are covered in yellow dust, as are the metal containers stacked in a corner. The store is small, smaller than Chika's walk-in closet back home."
Chika and her sister Nnedi had been in the market buying oranges and groundnuts when the riot started.
"It had all started at the motor park, when a man drove over a copy of the Holy Koran that had been dropped on the roadside, a man who happened to be Igbo and Christian. The men nearby, men who sat around all day playing draughts, men who happened to be Muslim, pulled him out of his pickup truck, cut his head off with one flash of a machete, and carried it to the market, asking others to join in; the infidel had desecrated the Holy Book."
Inside that store, Chika and the woman are an unlikely pair. The Woman belongs to the working class and Chika to the higher strata. The woman is Hausa Muslim and Chika is Igbo Christian. Initially Chika disparages that woman but slowly she changes as she finds that the woman is ready to share whatever little she has. Like her scarf, the threadbare one, probably the only one she owns, to tie a wound on Chika's leg. Chika too is grateful for that. In her grief of being separated from her sister, she shares the grief of the woman too, whose daughter too is lost in the riots.
Ethnic riots separate communities, yes. But they also bring people closer. Those ones who belong to different stratas.
"Later, Chika will read in the Guardian that "the reactionary Hausa-speaking Muslims in the North have a history of violence against non-Muslims", and in the middle of her grief, she will stop to remember that she examined the nipples and experienced the gentleness of a woman who is Hausa and Muslim."
In todays volatile world, where riots are very common, this could have happened anywhere. Adichie does not disappoint. Do read this story online here.
Meili met us at the door of the restaurant. She kissed my head as my father and I entered, and when he wasn’t looking, she slipped me a thin, red envelope.
Year of the Dog by Casey Kait is the 14th short story in Fifty-Two Stories.
The story has been told in the voice of a thirteen year-old girl. She and her father, Peter, are dining with Meili and her sons, Sammy and little Pete. Her mother is not there with them as she has a migraine. Meili's husband too is working late. The story starts with the girl thinking how much she likes Meili, who considers her like her own daughter. Meili is always giving her presents. This time she slips in twenty dollars in that thin, red envelope.
Sammy, 13, is morose throughtout the meal but little Pete, 9, is eager to talk about Tennis with her father. The girl is not too happy the way her father is monopilising the younger boy. They finish the meal and come out into the streets which are crowded. It is the Year of the Dog and one can hear cymbals playing and see the head of the Dragon moving with it in tune.
Sammy walks ahead, the girl is with little Pete, Meili and her father are behind. They buy titbits in the noisy, crowded streets and the girl in none too pleased to see her Father and Meili holding hands. At one point, Meili throws a tantrum and her father holds her again after she calms down. Sammy too has seen all this and says he hates his mother. The girl spend the twenty dollars given by Meili, to buy a toy drum for little Pete. She doesn't wish to have anything from Meili again. When Peter and Meili join the children, the girl refuses to shake hands with Meili and walks to their car with her father and starts crying..
This story started with good vibes between Meili and the girl. She says she is fond of Meili but at the end, she hates Meili. She shows her displeasure by refusing to shake hands. She does not make a scene or anything but does it with quiet dignity. Her father understands her turmoil and lets her cry. The reader too likes Meili in the beginning but somehow that diminishes towards the end. The girl has not expected Meili and Peter to have feelings for each other. She hates the very thought of Meili taking her mother's place. And so does the reader.
It is a story which is all too common. And that makes it very readable.
William Wallace Jamieson's wife Hazel was going to have a baby.
Thanks to CB James, I found Fifty-Two stories. Each week a new story will come up. There are four short stories as of now. I read the first one, The Missing Statues by Simon Van Booy.
"One bright Wednesday morning in Rome, a young American diplomat collapsed onto a bench at the edge of St. Peter’s Square.
There, he began to sob.""As it turned out, what I would remember most clearly about the year of my fall (or flight) from grace was Old Zach tunneling under Nichols Street to the Gunderpopp brewery."
I read Tunnels and Walls and Other Ways of Getting There online in Narrative Magazine. It is the story of the current week. The title attracted me as also the alliterated name of the author.
The narrator is a girl Hilda, studying in a catholic co-ed trying to fit in. Somehow or the other she is a misfit in there. The nuns, especially Old Zach are kind of weird. They try their best to make their pupils learn. Rewarding them in their own way.
"Sometimes, out of their proud and pellucid poverty, they gave you gifts. A Miraculous Medal, perhaps. Holy cards. Words of wisdom printed on deckle-edged onionskin. When the time was right, pamphlets listing the ten signs of a vocation. By stages they’d admit you to an inner circle of shared confidences. They might tell you, for instance, about Sr. Dominic’s impacted wisdoms or that they were making new habits (leaving to the uninitiated the illusion that they were born in them)."
The round about way of prose completely drew me in. The narrator has wit and sense of humour. She is practical too, knowing her owm limitations. This short story needs to be read with lots of concentration. One just can't Breeze through it. If one makes an effort, this story is well worth it.
It's 1972, and we're both seventeen."
The story flows in conversations between the two. From the conversations, one can see that the girl is more matured in her thinking than the guy. She also knows what she wants. The guy is uncertain and unsure about almost everything. Even their relationship. Or maybe I missed the whole point in this very short story too...*grin*
Another short story from The Frankenstein Omnibus edited by Peter Haining, The Dead Man by Fritz Leiber blows off ones mind. It is not scary in the sense of the word. Yet it speaks of an evil which is possible if we let it to.
"It walked in the woods. It was never born. It existed. Under the pine needles the fires burn, deep and smokeless in the mould. In heat and in darkness and decay there is growth. There is life and there is growth. It grew, but it is life and there is growth. It grew, but it was not alive. It walked unbreathing through the woods, and thought and saw and was hideous and strong, and it was not born and it did not live. It grew and lived about without living."
Short Story MondayI read Eliyahu ha-Navi by Mark Sparber in Strange Horizons, another short story site. It is a Jewish science fiction with lots of fantasy elements. 
"Although he was not recognizably human, in 1908 the old man was nevertheless recognizably Jewish. He looked as I imagine he must have looked for a thousand years. He was dwarfish and twisted, with long, gnarled limbs that grasped whatever they could clutch with a fierce clawing motion. His gray, matted beard and sidelocks met on the ground, where they tangled with each other and with the filthy fringes from his prayer shawl. He was small enough that my great-grandparents could fit him into an accordion case, and this is what they did, so that his moans and wheezing might be mistaken for the sound of wind running through an instrument's reeds."
This beginning sets the pace of this story which in a way defies description. Here prophet Elijah is brought to live in the new world. For the reason "It is Elijah that will tell the world of the Messiah's coming! He will go from door to door, knocking and saying, 'Gather your prayer shawl, gather your phylacteries! He is here! The Messiah is here!"
Elijah is taken to be a stinking old man. He is hated by the children yet they have to look after him. As an obligation for a better world, for the arrival of the Messiah.
When the narrator finds him in a bad state, we see a change in his heart. He no longer hates the pitiful prophet. He somehow has developed fondness for the wizened old man and prays for him to live.
The imagery in this story is good. It has that fantasy element which keeps us rivetted to the story. In the beginning, we hate the prophet but we slowly come to like him, even saddened when he falls ill. For all his fault, he seems like a helpless old man locked in a time period of not his making.
"From outside the room, from some distant hallway, I heard the moans and wheezes of an accordion."
I recommend.....
Another short story read for Short Story September Challenge. This is the 31st one. A bonus read!
"Before we met, you showed me your diary and then we were having sex on the wooden floor of your living room. I still remember the way the plants filtered the sunlight and the sound of the tea kettle building up steam. Then our son was at the foot of the bed, asking me where you'd gone."
Time, Again by Tim Maly defies description. It is short short story. One feels timeless reading this. One wants to what period of time is the protagonist talking about. It seems like a dream. Yet it is not. One wants to know about this time which can't be described. And what does Time, Again means? Maly has created magic with his words. A delightful short story which has past, no future.
"There's nothing I can do. The future is just as real as the past. There is no before or after anymore. Because of you, there never was. "
We weren't meant to live like this."
A story meant to be read. Click on Time, Again and read on.........
