My Brilliant Career

This is a semi-autobiography about a charismatic girl who rejects all the suitors that come her way and loves independence.  However, she falls for a guy Harold and you as a reader like him too much but you know that this gets in the way of her spirit.  When this book was published it was a scandal in Australia.  Franklin wouldn’t have it published again until a decade after her death.  It’s a feminist classic and I recommend the movie as well.  Miles Franklin had other men in her life but she never married.  She continued writing as well.  I need to read the sequel.

Kwaidan

The movie of this is much superior to the book.  That is not to say the book doesn’t have imaginative tales.  It’s just that there was so much visual imagery and it took more time to develop the stories.  Hearn was not Japanese.  He moved there and found much inspiration.  I liked The Story of O-Tei about a girl who promises to come back again into a guy’s life.  It was sweet but of course with a supernatural edge.  Yuki-Onna is an example of a story that was much better in the movie.  A five-page story became a thriller onscreen.  The best story happens to be the best part of the movie too. The Story of Mimi-Nashi-Hoichi about a blind man who is covered with Japanese writing for protection.  I won’t tell more.  You have to see and read it for yourself.  

Trial Balance

This collection includes stories that William March wrote from the 20’s-40’s.  William March is most known for The Bad Seed, the classic novel that really started the evil child genre.  He didn’t get to see how successful it would be becoming a play and an Oscar-nominated movie.  He died the same year it was published. I was happy to find that he’s great at short stories as well.  The best story in this collection is easily the comic Woolen Drawers about a promiscuous woman who wears woolen drawers, instead of fancy petticoats one day.  She is too embarrassed to sleep with her date.  Her date mistakes her for being a prudish woman and falls for this image.  Gradually the woman changes as well.   I also like George and Charlie about an ordinary man who is changed by a radical, philosophical thinker.  A Shop in St. Louis is about a girl who doesn’t put family as a priority, saving money for a business elsewhere.  She comes to regret her financial decisions.  Miss Daisy is another story worth reading.  It’s about a boy who meets a phony old woman.   This is out of print but wasn’t hard to find.

The Wife of his Youth and other stories

I really like Chesnutt.  He was a mixed author.  He stated that he was 7/8’s white but was proud of his African American background.  I read his short story The Sheriff’s Children for school in my American Literature class.  It was one of the best stories featured in this collection.  It’s about a sheriff who realizes the African American person in his jail is his child.  I also liked The Wife of his Youth where a dark black woman tells a man a story about how she got sold into slavery but is still looking for the husband that she lost.  There’s a cool twist.  Also, A Matter of Principle shows hypocrisy well.  The Bouquet is a lovely story about a black girl who dearly loves her teacher but can’t attend her funeral because of racism.  I never heard of Chesnutt before until this year.  He’s not that well known compared to authors like Zora Heale Hurston but he’s worth discovering.