Women and Children, Francine Prose
Book: 14
Title: Women and Children
Author: Francine Prose
Genre: General fiction, short stories
One-sentence summary: Errm... short stories, often about women feeling disengaged from their lives, the silliness of New Age types, or a combination of those two themes.
Why did you get this book? Francine Prose, as previously mentioned, is one of my favorite writers, and this was on the bargain table at the Brookline Booksmith.
Do you like the cover? Not particularly.
Did you enjoy the book? Ehhh... parts of it. The New-Age-mockery stories were fun but she's done a better job with that in collections like The Peaceable Kingdom. There was the occasional standout story, which mostly happened when she abandoned her wry, disaffected tone and started delving deeper into the characters. I got kind of bored with it by the end.
Was the author new to you and would you read something by this author again? No, and yes. In fact I'm halfway through Gluttony, which is her contribution to that NYRB (I think?) Seven Deadly Sins project. So expect a review of that soonish.
Are you keeping it or passing it on? Keeping.
Anything else? This is her first short story collection, so many of the stories prefigure themes and plotlines she would explore more fully in later books. On the whole, if I were to recommend Francine Prose to someone, I'd recommend something else. (A Peaceable Kingdom for short stories and Blue Angel or A Changed Man for novels, for the record.)
Scale of 1 to 10: 6
Number of pages: 202
Total pages for the year: 4580
Title: Women and Children
Author: Francine Prose
Genre: General fiction, short stories
One-sentence summary: Errm... short stories, often about women feeling disengaged from their lives, the silliness of New Age types, or a combination of those two themes.
Why did you get this book? Francine Prose, as previously mentioned, is one of my favorite writers, and this was on the bargain table at the Brookline Booksmith.
Do you like the cover? Not particularly.
Did you enjoy the book? Ehhh... parts of it. The New-Age-mockery stories were fun but she's done a better job with that in collections like The Peaceable Kingdom. There was the occasional standout story, which mostly happened when she abandoned her wry, disaffected tone and started delving deeper into the characters. I got kind of bored with it by the end.
Was the author new to you and would you read something by this author again? No, and yes. In fact I'm halfway through Gluttony, which is her contribution to that NYRB (I think?) Seven Deadly Sins project. So expect a review of that soonish.
Are you keeping it or passing it on? Keeping.
Anything else? This is her first short story collection, so many of the stories prefigure themes and plotlines she would explore more fully in later books. On the whole, if I were to recommend Francine Prose to someone, I'd recommend something else. (A Peaceable Kingdom for short stories and Blue Angel or A Changed Man for novels, for the record.)
Scale of 1 to 10: 6
Number of pages: 202
Total pages for the year: 4580
