Book Review//Stories for Winter and Nights by the Fire

Those of you who live in the same hemisphere as me might have some questions about this photo. After all, it isn’t winter and yet I am reading a wintery book and knitting mittens for my daughter. It is going to be 80 degrees F tomorrow. What is wrong with me?

What is wrong is that I am way behind on a lot of things these days. I actually read this book back in January but I read it while recovering from gallbladder surgery. I should have reviewed it right away but I didn’t and apparently the pain meds made me groggy because I don’t remember much about it. I am once again home recovering from surgery (my foot this time) and despite the pain meds making me groggy again we are going to give this a try. I’ve refreshed my memory in between naps. There have been so many naps today.

This volume of short stories contains writing by Elizabeth Bowen, Elizabeth Taylor, Edith Wharton, and Katherine Mansfield among others. I have enjoyed books by many of the writers featured here. Well, except for Edith Wharton. I have a deep and fiery hatred for Ethan Frome. I had to read it in high school and despised it. But, anyway, I had very high hopes for this volume. I will say that the short story format is not my favorite. I like time to become completely immersed in a story and to get to know the characters but that is hard to do in a short story.

The title of the book led me to expect a volume of cozy stories and that is not what this is. There is a story by Elizabeth Bowen about two women in a hat shop. A man stops in, the proprietor is an unusual woman, and somehow the story ends with a bit of a chill. What happened once everyone left? Several of the other stories left me with that feeling of more going on than is obvious. I have mixed feelings about this. Sometimes stories can be subtle and that is fine but sometimes I just want all the details! I greatly enjoyed the story by Elizabeth Taylor about a woman in a house that is being flooded by the Thames and the friendship she develops with the two young men in the house next door. I also liked the story by Elizabeth Berridge about a woman who lives alone and befriends a German prisoner of war who is working near her property. It had a haunting sadness to it.

This was not the cozy group of stories I was expecting but it was worth reading. And probably worth reading again. The stories feel like the type where you will appreciate them more on a reread where you can catch all the nuances of the writing. I reread portions of many of them today and feel that held true.

Well, now I have caught up on one book review. I have a scary number more to write but I am determined. And I am determined to finish my daughter’s mittens. Maybe she can have them by next winter. Slow and steady, that’s me these days. Or maybe just slow and not too steady. I’ll get there though.

My thanks to the British Library for sending me this book to review.