Short Stories Books

If you haven't read this all-time best adventure story, do so. You're in for a treat (it beats the movie versions hands down). During World War II, a plane crashes in the North African desert, and the survivors reconstruct it to fly again. That's enough to tell. Read a longer review after you read the book.
I hope you find the following suggestions useful. All great African adventures:

Also read "Cry Wolf," by Wilbur Smith--another great African story (set in Ethiopia in the 1930s): Cry Wolf

And don't miss "The Sands of Kalahari" (a plane crashes in the Kalahari desert): The Sands of Kalahari

"The Sapphire Sea" (a modern adventure in Zanzibar), by Ben Robinson.
The Sapphire Sea

With yet another movie treatment of this clever and accomplished novel about to explode onto our screens, it's even more to readers' advantage to check out Elleston Trevor's original story.

The 1965 Robert Aldrich version was a worthy effort but nevertheless held back from tackling the undercurrent of menace and sheer adult writing that made the novel such a triumph in the first place. The 2004 Hollywoodization, with Dennis Quaid. G Ribisi and Miranda Otto, barely seems to pay lip-service to the title before galumphing off in good old 'Indiana Jones-meets-Hidalgo' fashion towards lowest common denominated Phantasia-in-the-Sands.

Read quick to avoid disappointment.

This book has a fairly simple overall plot. A plane crashes in the desert, and when dealing with dire conditions the men who survive the crash try to find a way to survive the desert. The writing is gripping, and the personalities of the characters build through the book. The descriptions of the harsh conditions of the desert on the men, leave the reader disturbed, but wanting to read more. Themes that include the power and beauty of nature are intertwined throughout the book. Survival for these men is presented almost as a complicated puzzle which must be solved to avoid deadly consequences. It was a page turner for me- the writing is excellent!

The Flight of the Phoenix by Elleston Trevor is an excellent story that has spawned two very good movies. Pilot Frank "Shut It Down" Towns is sent to shut down an oil rig that has gone dry in the middle of the Libyan desert. On the way home, the plane crashes in a horrific sandstorm, killing two of the passengers. The survivors of the crash must band together to survive. Their original plan is to sit tight and wait for someone to come and rescue them until one of the passengers, a young aircraft designer named Stringer, proposed building a new plane out of the wreckage and flying to safety. What follows is a race against time as the survivors must battle the elements with limited supplies as they try to survive.

Elleston Trevor's novel is a well-told character study of what happens when people are placed in horrific conditions. Much of the novel centers around the fight for authority between Towns, the experienced yet self-doubting pilot, and Stringer, the young, obsessed aircraft designer. By the end of the novel, Trevor has fleshed out all the characters so the reader legitimately cares whether they survive or not. If you enjoy this novel, check out the 1965 classic starring Jimmy Stewart and Richard Attenborough and the exciting 2004 remake starring Dennis Quaid and Giovanni Ribisi. For a well-told story with believable characters and an unexpected twist, check out Elleston Trevor's Flight of the Phoenix!

"Flight of the Phoenix" held my attention, as an adventure novel should. What makes this book stand out is a character who is ignored for the first half of the book, because he's quiet and keeps to himself. In the middle of the book he becomes the most important character. In the penultimate chapter the plot twists around this character in what has to be most unexpected surprise I've ever seen in a novel. The character is a young engineer with Asperger's Syndrome, although the book was written thirty years before Asperger's Syndrome was discovered. Individuals with this form of autism are extremely intelligent but have poor social skills. They're ability to focus on a task can be their greatest strength or their downfall. In "Flight of the Phoenix" this is what saves the men, but then...well, I won't give away the plot! I listened to the audio download, which was very good except you really need to see what a Skytruck looks like, as the characters talk about different parts of the airplane wreckage. A quick Google search will find you photos of this type of aircraft.

I found this book to be helpful in getting my daughter to realize that everyone is afraid of something and that fear is a natural emotion. This books helps to show how the characters deal with their fears. If your child is very fearful of the dark, I would recommend you read the book before sharing with your child. I had no problems with an increase in fears after reading this book but neither of my children are very fearful of the dark.

This Franklin book is one of my favorites! All the Franklin books are great! This book teaches kids not to be afraid of the dark! Lots of reading for smaller children, but great pictures!

I GIVE THIS BOOK A FIVE STAR BECAUSE IT TEACHES YOUNGER KIDS BETWEEN THE AGES OF 1-6 ABOUT THE DARK AND HOW IT IS NOT SCARY.

This is the best of all of the Franklin stories, and the first one published. It's a wonderful read aloud story, a great story for children to act out, and an easy way to begin a discussion of "things that scare us". Children are amazed to learn that grownups can be frightened of things too. This book should be in every child's home collection and in every elementary teacher's too!

This was our first Franklin book and my son really, really likes Franklin now. I had never heard of him before this book, which was a "gift" from the pediatrician for my son's pre-preschool check-up.

The Franklin books are great.

This one, however, I wish we had skipped.

The thing is, my son was never afraid of the dark. I don't think it ever occurred to him that you *should* be afraid of the dark. But after reading this book, he started to have nightmares. We can't get him to tell us what they are about exactly but they have something to do with Franklin and his small, dark shell.

This might be a good book to help a child who is afraid of the dark get over it. But unless our child is some sort of anomoly, it could also have the potential of giving bad ideas to a child who is not afraid of the dark.

Consider your child when you purchase this book.

I bought this book for my ailing and flailing French vocabulary. Although I speak fluently, my diminishing vocabulary is directly accredited to my non-use and non-practice of the language. One note - many phrases are translated literally, yet lack the tonality and subtle nuances which are found in true meaning. Otherwise, a very easy read and a useful book for those of us who lack opportunity to speak the language. Would certainly recommend this book for an intermediate level and up.

The chosen stories are excellent--all of top quality, both from a literary and (often) from a philosophical perspective. It is very easy to use the fine translation side-by-side with the original French.

This is classic literature, a very good book. I'd be interested in a modern works like this as well. Seems like I saw one out there somewhere....

This book includes some great authors - the ones you should at least know about if you are going to learn the French language and appreciate French culture. I have always loved the idea of having the English translation on the opposite page. I think it makes learning structures easier. You see how we would write something in English, and then you see how the structure differs in the French version.

First the good. These stories are worth reading anyway, even if not trying to improve your French. Can't believe I never read Micromegas before! Can't believe it was written mid 1700s! So the selection of stories is an excellent one and the practice and vocabulary building comes quickly. For that reason, I'd unquestionably buy this again.

The bad. I know enough French to know that the translations are atrocious. Though I am not fluent in French, I believe I could have done a better, truer translation (with help of a French dictionary). Beautiful phrases are translated into mundane English cliches and some unknown French words are, on some occasions, "translated" into the identical (and equally unknown) word on the English side. Did the translater not have access to an English dictionary or did he not know what the French word really meant?

So -- definitely a useful buy for learning and practicing French and (particularly if you can read most of it in French) interesting stories as well. Just try not to refer to the English counterpart more than you must, such as for the periodic word translation.

The first and best of a family saga during the mid 1800s in England, when industry changes everyone's lives.

I can think of few better authors to take along on a long plane ride than Delderfield. God Is an Englishman is the first of a trilogy that runs a little out of gas by the end of the third book, but not in the first. To Serve Them All My Days got me hooked on Delderfield, and this series continued it. I can also recommend his book Diana. Alot of his works are out of print, although you can find them at liabraries, or Amazon's auction site -- or bookfinder.com

I am 15 and I loved God is an Englishman. Historical fiction is my favorite genre and the hours I spent on the 816 pages flew by. I found myself trying to finish my homework as early as possible so that I could get to the book before bed. It was also wonderful because it gave me so much to relate to in my Modern European History Class, where we are studying the same time period. I understand the events that we are learning about much more clearly because of Adam and Henrietta Swann. Everyone should read this book, I can't wait to read the other two!

This book has apparently stood the test of time. While I read it, I had no idea that it had been written 30 years ago. The historic details are magnificent, as is Delderfield's sense of English geography. The story is rather simple and predictable however. And the characters are too perfect. No character is this book is ever in danger of knowing failure, and to me, that detracts from their depth.

This book is a must read for any Anglophile. The story traces the development of a haulage firm that serves all of Enland and Wales and part of Scotland. While that is the major focus, the family life of the founder of "Swan on Wheels" is very much a part of it. In fact, all the characters involved are well presented with divergent and believable personalities.

I have had this collection all my life and have now passed the experience down to my girls. It is an invaluable, enchanting collection of beautiful songs and lullabies. "Golden Slumbers, A Selection of Lullabies from Near and Far" is the spiral bound book with record, published in 1956. I have often wondered if I would be able to find it in a more current edition. Now I have! I would also love to see this published in CD format, but for now will enjoy this cassette tremendously!

When my children were small, I think we wore out at least three of these tapes. They listened to it every night. The entire family still has all the words to this soothing music memorized. I would love to see it offered in a more durable format.

In the 1960s my parents played this record by my cradle. Now in the new millenium I play the tape every night by my son's crib. This is THE classic collection of timeless, matchless lullabyes.

Warm, gentle, soothing, memorable, and NOT tied in to any marketing campaign or multinational corporation. There are no toys connected with the songs that will be marketed to your children. No TV show. No videotapes or DVD to buy. Just an album of beautiful, authentic music that will provide priceless memories.

The sound quality is what you'd expect from an album recorded in the 1950s, or perhaps a little worse, but that in no way detracts from the charm of the record - it might even enhance it. My two-year-old now *asks* for the "lullabye tape" every night.

It's worth noting that the original record came with a spiral-bound book that included stories and lyrics. Unfortunately the tape lacks that book. I only wish this album was available on CD!

The album is nicely multicultural, but the majority of the songs are in English (in some cases somewhat archaic English). I suspect that there were one or two changes between the record and the new tape version, but I haven't had a chance to compare them properly. In any case, this is an album that every toddler should hear.

I have used this tape to put by preschool students to sleep, and now use it EVERY night to put my two children to bed. I never tire of the beautiful songs. I wish that the lyrics were included and that it were issued on CD. I would highly recommend this tape for anyone looking for a lovely nightime ritual.

I agree with those who say this is about the best lullaby recording ever, and those who were astonished to find it listed as a "book", and those who would like it updated to CD. It saved me from the crazies when my children were tiny, many many years ago. It's my favorite new-baby gift.

Westmoreland's stories have a way of drawing the reader into the lives of the characters. His use of imagery creates a setting so vivid that I felt like part of the story. Rarely has a story brought out that feeling of compassion that I felt while reading about the characters' plight in each of these gut wrenching plots. While the plots focus on tragic situations, Westmoreland has a way of bringing just enough humor to make the doom bearable. I like stories that allow me to explore a variety of emotions. I look forward to more from this promising writer.

Each story in this book captured me into a new world and way of thinking. The characters are very intense. Although there is much focus on illness and death - these are realities that many of us do not face directly each day. I found it hard to put the book down until I finished each story. Westmoreland's writing is captivating.

Each story had something to offer. As a mother of young children, I was really hit by the "Buried Boy." I also was touched by the regrets that the characters face when they are challenged by life/death.

I high recommend this book and look forward to more.

Few books I've read in the last couple of years pack as staggering a wallop as this collection of stories. With prose both eloquent and spare and dialogue that rings utterly true, Timothy Westmoreland's stories call up characters struggling to reach beyond physical and spiritual limitations. These stories, beautiful despite (and because) of their dark, unadorned vision of life, shimmer with poignancy and clarity.

There's a lot of darkness in these stories, but there's strange beauty, too: the weird call of a bluetick hound in snowy woods, the deadly autumn colors of a forest fire on a distant hill, the grieving man who tears out his ceiling to build a planetarium in his kitchen, his own private view of the stars. Westmoreland is as precise and deft as a surgeon, and as daring. He takes his scalpel right to the heart of things, where the trouble is, and like a surgeon he'll take any necessary risk. There are other young writers with Westmoreland's kind of skill and craft, but none with his courage. He uses his talent to get right to the hard truths that other people use their talent to avoid. He is the rarest of writers, a storyteller free of denial. There's nothing Westmoreland fears but dishonesty. If you're looking for a book where frogs are princes and no one ever dies, this isn't it. But somehow I found these stories consoled me. These are stories about living with the darkness, and never giving in. There's no running away, but hope is always turning up in the unlikeliest places.

A powerful new voice in fiction, Timothy Westmoreland has that rare ability to make even the most mundane aspects of his characters' lives seem transcendent. And he does not shy away from the bleak realities his characters' lives in any of these eight stories. Instead, he carries you headlong into the depths of their loneliness, illness, and loss. If you have the courage and willingness to go with him, to struggle along with his characters in their search for connection and meaning in an unfriendly world, then Westmoreland will not only delight you with his beautifully turned phrases and spare, elegant dialogue, but he will leave you stronger and wiser from the experience. I look forward to more work from this promising new writer.

This novella should fit comfortably beside the plays of Sophocles or Aeschylus or the tragedies of Shakespeare. Don't let that intimidate you: it's more accessible than all of them, and a perfect book for a book club. It's the story of a man who commits a despicable act of violence in his immaturity, against a woman who must live with the consequences all her life - as must he. Questions of justice, repentance, mercy, and forgiveness are raised - and left to readers to answer as best we can. Undset's portrayals of the characters maximize the difficulties of these questions and the discussions which readers will be craving after finishing this fine book. I picked it up to see if I like Undset enough to commit to 1000 pages of Kristen Lavransdatter. I have since picked up that meganovel - and find it, so far, less engaging by far than Gunnar's Daughter, which deserves one of the highest places in the canon of Western literature.

Undset, Lagerlof, Bjornson, Hamsun, Gustafsson; five stars aren't enough to reflect the masterpieces that they all wrote, and, in the case of Gustafsson, are still writing. Read all their books and grow a lifetime in a couple of years.

I suppose that anything that sells books makes it to the top of the page, although I appreciate that the first review I read about this book was straightforward, unbiased and sans agenda. I have been reading the great writers of the world since I learned to read. I began to explore the works of Undset, Lagerlof, Bjornson, Hamsun, Gustafsson, etc., thirty years ago and it irks me no end that the works of a Scandinavian writer like Undset, who lived in a time when women had all the rights in the world, should be referenced by your commentator from Brattleboro, VT as womens fiction. If she has read "The Master of Hestviken" or "Kristen Lavransdatter", then she must have missed all the suffering endured by the men and women. Great works of creativity do not address personal agendas. They are wrought from the soul. Lagerlofs' "Saga of Gosta Berling", another masterpiece, explores the same moral questions with a male protagonist. I say to you, dear lady from Vermont, that feminism is dead; we are all feminine and masculine regardless of our plumbing, and the last GREAT female poet, Sylvia Plath, lived the pain of that polarity until it killed her. Shame on you Amazon.com for using divisiveness and the promulgation of hatred, fear, and misunderstanding to make a buck. Publish this!!

Sigrid Undset's Gunnar's Daughter weaves Scandinavian folklore, mythology and violence to ensnare the reader into the period of the Saga Age. In this book, we meet Vigdis Gunnarsdatter -- a survivor in many different levels who is raped and delivers an illegitimate child. As it is said that time heals old wounds, that is not the case with Vigdis. Even with her eventual redemption, peace of mind still eludes her until she takes her very last breath. The scope of history and folklore in Gunnar's Daughter makes this an interesting and quick read. However, it is highly recommended that the reader marks the introduction and notes by Sherrill Harbison -- as they provide much information that makes the book more insightful and pleasurable to read.

In this case of medieval date rape and the grim consequences which follow hard upon it, Sigrid Undset created a wonderfully literate experience using the saga "voice". Although I detected slippages in tone, here and there, and felt the ending too contrived and overwrought to be pure saga, I was still swept along by this book, finishing it in a single sitting. It is short, yes, but also a very compelling narrative as it details the tribulations of two would-be lovers who are yet too proud and self-willed for their own good or for the society in which they find themselves. As with the typical viking hero, Viga-Ljot is overly confident of his own charms and impatient of results. And Vigdis, the maid he has set his heart on, is no less aloof and overbearing in her own way than that historical figure, Sigrid the Haughty, who so angered King Olaf Tryggvesson that he slapped her in the midst of their courtship and thereby sealed his doom. Viga-Ljot does much worse in this tale and his fate is thus forever bound up with a woman who cannot forget or forgive him. Like Gudrun Osvif's daughter in Laxdaela Saga, Vigdis bides her time and nurses her pain but, in the end, that pain is not assuaged by the actions she takes, for it is ultimately destructive to everyone it touches.

A good example of the saga form in modern literature indeed, and yet, despite the finely tuned prose of this novel, capturing the nuances and understatement of the saga voice with masterly strokes, there is an underlying stridency here, an almost emotional overreaching which is not, itself, true to the saga form. In some ways this book is too modern and its author's sensibility, at this juncture in her career, almost too young and unseasoned. Undset seems to be reaching for the tragic denouement of the Greek classics to end her tautly told tale rather than content herself with the flatly understated and finely nuanced wrap-up more appropriate to the saga form. But this Greek-like ending left me much colder than the drily tossed-off afterthought of a true saga might have done. And yet, for all that, Undset has here given us one of the better modern novels done in saga form. My hat is off to her.

By the way, for another really fine novel based on the old sagas, one, in fact, that I think outdoes even this one, try SAGA: A NOVEL OF MEDIEVAL ICELAND by contemporary Canadian author Jeff Janoda. Many have tried to evoke the sagas in modern prose but few have done it as well as he has. Janoda has written a contemporary novel that does genuine justice to its original source, Eyrbyggja Saga, while not succumbing to the overwrought sensibility which mars GUNNAR'S DAUGHTER at the end. If you like fiction grounded in the old Norse saga literature, then Janoda's book should be your very next stop.

SWM
author of The King of Vinland's Saga

In writing Gunnar's Daughter, Sigrid Undset had two aims: to show that the struggles of the human person against himself, others, and nature have no history; and to reveal a pagan past as it actually was--cruel and bloody in contrast to the growing Christian faith it encountered. In both cases, she succeeded brilliantly.

Take the first case. You often hear yammering from certain quarters that it is possible for human beings to progress as a society beyond their passions. Myopic nonsense! The characters of Gunnar's Daughter hurt themselves and others, and love as much as they hate, with exactly the same capacity as anyone today. An honest reader will realize that we are no better at heart than the men (and woman) whose stories are told here--but also that we are no worse. What we have hated and loved and yearned for, men and women have always hated and loved and yearned for. In reading this you realize for the first time that you can actually appreciate your ancestors as living men and women, and not as faceless DNA donors.

In the second case, in Undset's time--the early 20th century--there was then as now the movement to glorify the pre-Christian past, the sort of naivety only possible from the safety of the Christianized world. Undset was rightly disturbed by this movement, and in Gunnar's Daughter she draws the picture of bloody, violent, might-makes-right world--and better yet, shows the redeeming effect of Christianity as it makes its way into Scandinavia. Contrast Vigdis' exposure of her healthy but unwanted infant--an unremarkable event in her time, even if, as Undset shows, one not done without lingering sorrow--with the later refusal of Viga-Lyot to expose his deformed and sickly baby expressly because, as he states, he is a Christian, and will not hear of it. This is of even more interest in our day, when the growing nonChristian influence on our society has led us full circle to a time when once again the unwanted baby is done away with--Undset's picture was more prescient than she knew.

All in all, a haunting and true book.

One of the most provocative first collections I've ever read. This book has it all--a father who slaughters a horse because his son is killed, a young Amish boy who becomes English, and jumps the fence to do so. These stories are about hope and salvation, about dysfunction and survival. Read it. It's good. I heard this author is coming out with a collection of essays, and I can't wait to read them. I believe it will be published by Warner Books, so keep your eyes open, because I know it's going to be good.

I took creative writing with this woman and can tell you she is not only a great teacher, she's also a very talented writer. Diana Joseph's stories are humorous and sad and tell it like it is. Take her classes and read this book!!!

"The septic system man likes Leslie. He found her needy and vulnerable and sweet.
"He would mistake this for love."

So writes Diana Joseph from her story "Windows and Words," one of the many resonant stories from her debut short story collection Happy or Otherwise. With a rhythmic voice, like some surreptitious siren, each story draws you in- anyone who reads a Diana Joseph story will not mistake the magic of her sentient spells.

Happy or Otherwise is a collection of short stories, the kind that know how to open certain locked doors of emotion inside you. And when one of those doors is opened, the well of truth flowing from these stories cannot be dammed. You find yourself chanting the voice of each narrator in your head, and question certain illusions about happiness and what it means to love.

As editor of The Pathfinder Magazine, I've had the pleasure of reading and editing many short stories. Never have I read an author as funny or truthful as Diana Joseph. She has the biting humor of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. and the emotional truthfulness of Tim O'Brien.

In "Bloodlines," Tabbitha tells the story of her dead brother and of how her grief-stricken father reconciles his son's tragic death in an unthinkable way. The story sears into your mind with passages like this: "We found him sitting on a hickory stump under his deer stand, his elbows were resting on his thighs, his hands were covering his ears, he was looking at the space between his feet, and I have seen men sitting this way since-in airports and bus stops and train stations, at this very moment on the edge of my bed; men broken by bankruptcy and faithless wives and their children's hate . . ."

"Naming Stories" is about the narrator's sense of identity, something everyone questions in their lives. One day, in school, the narrator learns about genetics . . . her parents both have blue eyes, as do her brothers-she has brown eyes. "Two years pass before I mention this to my parents. It's Report Card Day, and I've failed math. I need a way to distract them. And it works."

Happy or Otherwise is a work of art. Creative writing at its finest, funniest, most gut-wrenching and truest. This collection of short stories fulfills the reader's imagination and heart. You will not be disappointed and you will find yourself re-reading these stories, Diana Joseph's unique and rhythmic voice chanting through your mind the whole time.

-John Steele
Managing Editor

Pathfinder Magazine

Diana Joseph writes with heart, wit and intelligence. Each story in this collection reads wonderfully on its own--"Schandorsky's Mother" is my favorite--and builds toward a unique collective vision of motherhood. This should be required reading for every parent. Diana finds a rare blend of metaphors to access those painful struggles and exhilarating joys that make child rearing such a punch drunk experience. This is so good in so many ways.

This is a beautiful book of stories, each of which made my heart ache. Diana Joseph writes as if she's in love with each of her characters, even the not-so-nice ones; her sentences are soft and true. There wasn't a story in this collection that I didn't like, but my favorite is "Sick Child," if only because it has no business being a story: it's about a single mom with a sick son, and nothing really happens, except the kid coughs and the mother thinks. But it's lovely, and completely authentic.

It begins, "She'll remember this as a friendlier time: he's coughing, but only because he can't not cough. His cough is a barking seal; it's a clogged drain. It's her name in the middle of the night. As tempting as it may be to ignore him, to put a pillow over her head, to pull the comforter over her face, to close her eyes and count to ten in every language she knows--English, Japanese, Pig Latin--he'll still cough; she'll still hear him."

As the story continues, she remembers other times when her son was sick or injured, and times when she was, as a girl. She remembers an incident when her son was outside and came in with a wound near his eye that required stitches. She remembers the reactions other people in her life--the doctor, her parents, her ex-husband (the boy's father), her lover--had to this injury, and in their reactions we perceive their characters and their influence on her. She remembers, and looks out the window, and smokes, and her son continues to cough and call out her name. She is a woman who is keeping it together, but not well, not neatly, and not to her own satisfaction. She both loves her son and is sick of hearing him cough.

At the end of the story, she remembers a trip to the bank, when her son was two; as they were waiting in line at the drive-through window, he abruptly vomited in the back seat; she couldn't decide whether to continue to make her deposit, or go home to take care of her son:
"He emitted another deep belch, then he turned his face from her. He hiccupped, he was frowning, he was trembling. She knew he wanted to cry, and if he did, it would be explosive, loud and insistent. It would fill the car.
Relax, baby, she said. You'll be okay, I promise.
He wouldn't look at her. Instead, he looked out the window. As she soothed him, he continued to stare sadly out the window, and in his profile--his forehead wrinkled, his brow furrowed, his bottom lip quivering--she could see what he'd become, how he'd be when he was a man with troubles beyond his control."

This passage illustrates what I love about Joseph's writing: the small details, the honesty, the eloquent and gentle sentences. She writes like a poet--with evocative imagery, efficacy of language, and as much attention to how words sound as to what they are conveying. I can't wait to read her next book.

There were many funny stories in this book, (Sourdough and Burd being among my favorites,) but also some good heartwarming life lessons. Like the story about the lottery winner Emil and his principles, and the overall theme of the everyday ups and downs of life and family relationships. I really liked how the complexity of feelings for family was conveyed. Great read!

I picked this up on a whim in a used bookstore because I needed something to read while waiting for my son to finish with an appointment. What a find! Mr. McLean has a terrific eye and ear for wry observations and dialog, especially concerning kids and teenagers. And then there is his wit, sharpened by the fact that he laughs most readily, ultimately, at himself. I haven't laughed this hard since James Thurber, Garrison Keillor, and David Sedaris.

I picked this book out of a list given to me by my 12th grade english teacher. After searching everywhere i ordered it off amazon and am very pleased i did. it is an amazingly light, funny story about a 'stock' family that is a great summer read. i recommend it to both guys and girls, great book!

I can see why Stuart McLean is one of Canada's beloved storytellers through the warmth, humanity and humor of his stories. My favorite stories came early in the book, one of them being "Turkey" which starts off both the book and the Winter section. The description of the turkey before it was roasted had me and my husband howling with laughter. Another favorite is the one about the birthday party, especially the scene where Dave tries to frost the cake while it is still warm. My husband recently made the same mistake when he was frosting my birthday cake. I think there is enough depth to this collection of stories that most any one can come away with a favorite story or at least a favorite scene.

... a very ordinary family. Now, I don't mean ordinary in the boring sense of the term, quite the contrary. This is a collection of short stories spanning a year in the lives of a middle-class family. Everyone will be able to recognize themselves or others in these people to whom funny things tend to happen.

A quick read that will have you smiling (and giggling) on the bus.

You won't regret picking it up, and will look for McLean's other collections of stories about this wonderful family upon completing it.

In volume five of Proust's massive and perspicacious `a la recherché,' we find the narrator Marcel, slowly, yet surely, falling out of love with Albertine. Proust is extraordinarily masterful at evoking the painful (and yet very real) feeling of gradual disaffection, which all lovers must inevitably face with each other. Marcel pontificates endlessly and relentlessly on Albertine. He loves, her (or maybe we should say him), he doesn't love her, he loves her, he doesn't love her, etc. etc. Until, finally, the moment of decision, he tells her that he does not love her and wishes her to leave, insisting that she will be happier without him. Of course, the moment Albertine departs, Marcel is in despair, he has lost has love, and Albertine is reduced to the status of the `fugitive.' This volume is one of the most beauteous and thoughtful unfolding of the loss of love, and the painful convalescence that transpires in the subsequent period. Marcel goes to Venice, and explores that wondrous and ancient European city, and he sends help to find Albertine, only to discover that she has died in a horseback accident. In addition to the tragic loss of Albertine, Marcel grows continually disenchanted with the aristocratic world to which he belongs. Proust is brilliant in his ability to sustain this massive web of characters, as he reintroduces figures from the early stages of the search, such as Gilberte (Marcel's first love), and Mme Verdurin. This book evokes the meaning of life as it unfolds temporally, and the meaning of relationships throughout the course of a lifetime, and how they change and drift in and out of focus at different stages. It is one of the great works of Western literature.

The 7th of March I found this book, ISBN:0713996048. Now it's the 12th and I've returned to buy the book,except I can't locate it on the site! What is going on? Where's the first volume in the set? I'm so frustrated by this. I waited for years for the new translation to be completed.Help me!

Modern Library's Volume V deals with the relationship between Marcel and Albertine. It is a complex, psychological relationship to say the least. In the Captive, Albertine lives with Marcel in his apartment in Paris and in The Fugitive one wonders who is, in fact, more captive -- Albertine or Marcel. It would seem to be Albertine for whom Marcel possesses an obsessive love and concurrent fear of her sapphic penchant. But it is also Marcel who will sacrifice experience if he makes a commitment to her. Who is more free, the captive or the fugitive? Proust raises questions about how to serve best the artist's quest for beauty. In fact, how does one really ever "capture" the beauty of life in art or music or literature? Even in a masterpiece, is it not beauty the fugitive that usually dwells just beyond one's capture? Or like Vinteuil's septet or the music of Wagner or the painting of Rembrandt, is the best for which one can hope of fugitive beauty only a brief fleeting experience? Are the vast tracts of time spent to understand the beauty and meaning of life worth it? As a writer does he not habitually surrender life in order to capture it? Or is the pursuit of the capture of the beauty of life in fact where one realizes its most sublime value? One sees in Proust toward the end of The Fugitive a member of society who respects it but chooses by reasons of health not to position himself so visibly within it. Despite his family name and vast but dwindling fortune inherited from his beloved grandmother, he seems to become somewhat ultimately disenchanted with the intricacies of Faubourg-St. Germain society to which he devotes so much of his writing. He recognises society's shallow obsession with materialism and rampant snobbery but his own place in society is captured by its complex history and tacit rules and Marcel is inescapably a captive of his own culture. When Albertine is lost to him toward the end of the volume, as in the prior volumes, the story line's serial intrigue advances most. Characters from prior volumes reappear, reminiscent of Balzac, whom Proust adored, but like him they change,too, and usually for the worse over time. The great tapestry of the characters of Proust -- Albertine, Gilberte, Swann, Brichot, Bloch, Charlus, Morel, Saint-Loup -- ultimately surprise and usually disappoint him. As to nagging questions about Proust's own orientation, "Personally I found it absolutely immaterial from a moral standpoint whether one took one's pleasure with a man or a woman, and only too natural and human that one should take it where one could find it." I found myself wishing that Proust had written more about Bloch and Saint-Loup and Gilberte, and less about Albertine. But she was, like his work, the one obsession, the endeavor of which understanding he could never escape and never quite marry -- she was his beauty and his art. She was the breath of life itself from his pen and from his experience of life as seen through the eyes of a true genius.

The Albertine episodes make more sense if we assume this is a homosexual ralationship. Albertine's independence, and her being allowed to live in a young man's apartment, and other aspects of her social life do not seem likely for a young woman in the nineteen hundreds. Marcel's (and incidentally this is the only volume where he refers to himself as Marcel) suspicions then become the gay lover's fears that his lover prefers heterosexuality. Albertine is the only female in the Recherche who never gets married.
Apart from these external clues there is quality about the the affection Marcel feels that suggests a gay rather than a straight relationship.
This volume marks a turning point in the narrator's fascination with the aristocracy. From here on disenchantment sets in, and the references to homosexuality become almost homophobic.

This is volume five of the superlative new translation of "In Search of Lost Time," containing the two books of the Albertine cycle, which are now titled "The Prisoner" (translated by Carol Clark) and "The Fugitive" (tr. Peter Collier). Though I haven't yet read their translations, I have found the new editions to be a wonderful improvement over those done in the 1920s by Charles Scott Moncrieff. So I have no hesitation in giving them five stars.

Unhappily for American readers, current U.S. copyright law prevents Viking/Penguin from publishing the last two volumes of "Lost Time" in this country until 95 years after Proust's death, or 2018. The first four volumes have been published here in handsome hardcovers (more handsome than the British edition), but the only way to obtain this and the final volume ("Finding Time Again") is to find an imported British hardcover or paperback. -- Dan Ford