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Book Review: Mulliner Nights by P.G. Wodehouse (Series, #3) (Bottom of the TBR Pile Challenge)
Summary:
Mr. Mulliner has a wide variety of eclectic relatives, and he’s more than happy to tell snippets of their life stories over a pint at the local pub. From a freewheeling artist brought into line by a judgmental cat to a timid fellow who accidentally subscribes to a correspondence course on how to get a backbone to a private detective with such a disturbing smile that criminals readily confess their hijinks keep the patrons of Angler’s Rest in stitches.
Review:
This made it onto my tbr pile thanks to a visit to Harvard Books’ used books and remainders cellar. This was in the remainders pile, and three things drew me to it. 1) It was under $5, 2) The cover has a cat drunk on whiskey on it, 3) I had just read Love Among the Chickens
Don’t worry about this being the third in a series. The only connection among the short stories is the main characters are all a Mulliner (or married to one). It was completely unnecessary to have read the first two books in the series to get into this collection, although I intend now to read all of the Mulliner books. I really appreciated how Wodehouse sets up a structure to hold his short story collection together in one unit. Although they are all self-contained tales, their being together in one collection actually makes sense. They have more in common than just the author. They are literally a family of stories. This helped it hold my interest in a way that many short story collections can’t.
This collection consists of 9 short stories, most of which have some sort of love element. One person wants to be with (or marry) another and must overcome some sort of obstacle (usually caused by British upper-class culture) in order to be with them. Hilarity ensues. My favorite of these was “The Story of Webster,” the cover’s drunk cat. In this a freewheeling artist has his religious uncle drop his cat off with him while he goes on assignment to Africa. The judgmental, sullen cat soon starts to reign in the young artist, much to his and his girlfriend’s chagrin. Everything about this, from the early 20th century fashion and dialogue to the witty commentary on cats and culture works perfectly, particularly for this cat-lover. The story that I thought worked least-well, and unfortunately wraps up the book, is “Gala Night.” A pastor Mulliner accidentally helps a young couple who enjoys dancing to acquire the young woman’s parents’ approval of their union. I didn’t like the religious Mulliner. He just wasn’t funny to me. Similarly the catalyst of a mysterious mood enhancing drink just lacked the creativity found in the other stories. Fortunately, most of the stories fell much closer to the hilarity of the whiskey drinking cat. However, a couple did fall a bit flat for me, which is why while I greatly enjoyed the book, I wouldn’t say I was totally in love with it.
Overall, this is a wonderfully witty collection of short stories held together by an elderly Mulliner who enjoys telling (possibly tall) tales about his family over a pint in the local pub. If you enjoy a dry wit and slapstick humor to top off a cute love story, this collection is for you.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: Harvard Books
Previous Books in Series:
Meet Mr. Mulliner
Mr. Mulliner Speaking
Book Review: Where the Blind Horse Sings: Love and Healing at an Animal Sanctuary by Kathy Stevens (Bottom of TBR Pile Challenge)
Summary:
When Kathy Stevens decided to change careers mid-life, she wanted to do something that would help animals and let her teach. She landed on the idea of founding an animal sanctuary. But this book is very minimally about Kathy. It is mostly about the animals that came to find a safe haven at the sanctuary she founded. Animals like Rambo the sheep who guards other animals. Paulie a former cockfighting rooster who loves car rides. And of course a blind horse once terrified to move who now goes for trail rides.
Review:
This book wasn’t what I was expecting, which was an account of setting up and running an animal sanctuary. Instead it is a collection of short stories about individual animals who live at Catskill Animal Sanctuary, in the vein of James Herriot, although not quite to that classic’s level.
The stories are roughly grouped based on the situations that led the animals to the sanctuary, their personality, and of course some ultimate peaceful deaths at the sanctuary. I was a bit frustrated that instead of telling one animal’s story end to end, they were split up among sections. I can understand not wanting to end every chapter with an animal’s death, but I also think seeing one animal’s life in a complete story would be more touching. On the other hand, I also appreciated how clearly the different animals’ personalities were drawn without ever venturing into the land of hypothesizing. One doesn’t have to impose their own beliefs on an animal to clearly see the difference between a hurt, abused animal and a happy one. Stevens presents the difference quite clearly without venturing into speculation, which I think will give the book the broadest audience.
In spite of the dark past lives of these once abused animals, the book is a light read, both in spirit and in content. You won’t learn the nitty gritty of founding and running an animal sanctuary, which I think is too bad. It’d be nice if there was even an epilogue about more of the day to day realities of rescuing animals. On the other hand, the light, easy read gives the book a broader audience. It also features a suggested further reading list at the end, as well as links to the sanctuary’s website and invitations to visit, so those who want more can seek it out.
Overall, this is a well-written, feel-good collection of stories of the animals of Catskill Animal Sanctuary. It doesn’t provide much insider information on the running of animal rescue charities, but it does provide insight into the personalities of farm animals. Recommended to animal lovers who enjoy short stories.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: Amazon
Book Review: Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic edited by Eduardo Jimenez Mayo and Chris N. Brown
Summary:
This collection gathers 34 contemporary Mexican short stories featuring fantasy, scifi, and literary, clearly a wide range.
Review:
For me this collection was very hit and miss, and alas even the hits weren’t that wonderful. Part of the issue is there seems to be no rhyme or reason behind the order in which the tales are presented. It feels as if 34 completely random stories were selected with the only thing they have in common being Mexican authors. I generally prefer a short story collection to have a more universal theme or play upon similar tropes, but there is none of that here. The stories range from young boys hunting iguanas to figuring out how to dispose of a body to a trophy wife on vacation in Las Vegas to a pact with the devil. It was a bit of an exhausting collection to read. That said, I’d like to highlight a couple of my favorites that kept the read from being an entirely troublesome experience.
“Hunting Iguanas” by Hernan Lara Zavala both gives a glimpse into country Mexican life, which isn’t something we get to encounter very much, and provides commentary on colonization.
“Lions” by Bernardo Fernandez was particularly delightful for an animal rights activist to read. In a time of budget cuts the less attractive animals of the zoo are let loose in the city park and gradually take over. Delightfully tongue-in-cheek.
“The Nahual Offering” by Carmen Rioja features a disturbingly prophetic dream by a tribal woman. It is a great example of the beautifully grotesque.
You can see, though, that I was only able to pick out three short stories from a collection of 34 to highlight as particularly enjoyable to me. The collection simply lacks a universality of theme or talent.
Overall this collection is an interesting peek into contemporary Mexican writing, although it does seem the editors could have done a better job in selecting what to include. Recommended to those with a marked interest in modern Mexican writing.
3 out of 5 stars
Source: LibraryThing EarlyReviewers
Book Review: Fourth Degree Freedom by Libby Heily
Summary:
A collection of five widely varied short stories.
“Thank You For Calling”–A day in the life of a woman working for a call center during the Recession.
“The Event”–A dystopian future where once a year male teens and young adults go out and shoot the elderly.
“Fourth Degree Freedom”–A post nuclear war future where some children are born as different degrees of “monsters.”
“The Last Six Miles”–A woman gets over her divorce by becoming a runner.
“She Floats”–A woman wakes up in a tank with limited oxygen left and a man observing.
Review:
It’s difficult to talk about this collection as a whole, since the stories range so vastly, not only over different genres, but also in quality of writing. Thus, I must address them individually.
“Thank You For Calling”
I don’t usually do contemporary literary, but this one made me smile and sad almost simultaneously. The main character is struggling during the recession, but she also must listen to other people’s problems all day. A bit of a typical storyline? Yes. But still relatable and well-written. 3 stars
“The Event”
The best story in the collection. I recommend to Heily that she turn this one into a novel. A future with no violence and thus overpopulation is typical is dystopian fiction, but Heily takes it in a fun direction. The final scene leaves the reader doubting that the main character knows the truth about his own society. There were also no obvious flaws in the writing itself. 5 stars
“Fourth Degree Freedom”
This personally didn’t hit any of my own hot buttons, but it is well written. The idea of chemicals from war affecting different pregnancies in different ways is an interesting one. Having a sibling see the humanity in the monster child where others do not is rather typical, but still touching. 4 stars
“The Last Six Miles”
Being the fitness nut that I am, I really enjoyed seeing the main character go from a depressed over-eater to a marathon runner. The content of this story is uplifting, even if the ending is a bit predictable. 4 stars
“She Floats”
I was so incredibly disappointed in this one. I had the feeling from the first few sentences that this was basically going to be a Saw rip-off, and it was. There’s nothing wrong with having a psycho kidnap a person and put them in a trap to get out of, but it must have something else in it that makes it different from the well-known series. 1 star
Overall, this collection starts out average, strengthens, then crashes at the end. I also believe Heily may have trouble finding an audience due to the variance from literary to dystopian and then to horror. I would advise her to take the two strong dystopian stories and either make them into novels or write more scifi short stories and repackage them together. Similarly, the literary fiction I believe would strongly appeal to many modern women during this current recession. If she adds more literary stories to these two and packages it as a type of collection for the modern woman, she could have great success with them. The last story must be re-done or trashed, however. It sours the rest.
Essentially, if any of the short stories above appeals to you, I would encourage you to get this book. It is only 99cents, and a good short story is definitely worth that.
3 out of 5 stars
Source: Kindle copy from the author in exchange for my honest review
Book Review: The Sweet Smell of Success and Other Stories by Ernest Lehman
Summary:
A collection of Ernest Lehman’s noir style short fiction, including The Comedian and The Sweet Smell of Success, which was turned into a film in the 1950s. Varying in length from flash to many pages, most of the stories address the damage caused to individuals by the overly hungry theater, movie, and television industries. Some of the stories also look at individuals suffering from discontent in marriage.
Review:
My first entry in my reading challenge to read books I bought for university but never got around to reading. This was assigned for my Film Noir class in conjunction with watching The Sweet Smell of Success. I loved that class and at least enjoyed the assigned books that I read at the time. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for these short stories.
Lehman’s writing doesn’t just evoke the past of the 1950s, it evokes an alternate, incredibly depressing universe. I have the feeling that was his point in writing these stories. The entertainment industry is evil and will slowly rob you of your soul. There’s definitely merit in that, but it can get a bit depressing and redundant to read the same theme over and over again.
I also found the dialogue jarring. The characters do things like call other men “baby,” and I can’t help but wonder if people actually talked like that back then. It made the stories ring a bit more fake to me than I think they should have.
Three of the stories revolve around press agent Sidney Falco and columnist J. J. Hunsecker. While I enjoyed these short stories it felt as if someone had ripped out three chapters from a back and handed them to me out of order. I wish Lehman had written this as a book or novella. He clearly had an affinity for these characters, as he repeatedly came back to them to explore them, so I wonder why he never just wrote a long piece about them.
The Comedian though is where Lehman hits his stride in this style and theme. He takes just the right amount of time to tell the story. He subtly lets us know the background information vital to feeling something for these characters on this crucial day, and the overarching them of the story is deeper than “the entertainment industry is evil.” Oh, it is still represented as bad, but that is not the main point of the story, which makes it stronger. I recommend reading this short story if you can get your hands on it.
Overall, if you’re in the mood for a marathon session of dark noir, you’ll enjoy this book. Otherwise, I’d recommend finding one of the short stories to get a taste of the 1950s version of the genre.
2.5 out of 5 stars
Source: University bookstore
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