The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford

Jean Stafford is a pretty much-forgotten author from the 50’s.  I read her novel The Mountain Lion and was highly impressed by it.   So I read her collected short stories which won the Pulitzer Prize.  The best story The Echo and the Nemesis is about a fat rich girl and her skinny friend.  The fat girl is haunted by her dead beautiful twin sister.  She tries to lose weight by going to places where the food is no good.  A Country Love story is about an ill husband and how the wife drifts into a dream world while all of it is going on.  Also, I liked The Healthiest Girl in Town about a girl who becomes friends with two girls with tuberculosis and lies about her father’s health just to fit in.  Jean Stafford does excellently on stories about adolescence.  Another story which deals with children is Bad Characters which is about a girl who becomes friends with a thief.  A Reading Problem about a girl who is finding it hard to find a place to read and finds it at the jail.  Stafford is an author that deserves another look.  

Dicey's Song

This is a good sequel to Homecoming.  In some ways, it’s better because the first book kind of drifted when the family was homeless.  In this the Tillerman family is being raised by the grandmother.  I liked the kids in the book.  They are all explored in this movie. A number of things happen in this book like Dicey gets a job at a grocery store and ends up helping the owner run the store.  She becomes friends with a guitarist and a girl named Mina.  Dicey’s sister Maybeth has problems learning how to read but becomes proficient at music.  It was a good book and I can see why it won the Newbery Medal as the characters feel real. 

The Seagull

I like this play.  It’s the first Chekhov play I’ve read.  It’s about a struggling writer, an actress, and a famous writer.  The actress is dating the struggling writer but dumps him aside for a famous writer who mistreats her. The struggling writer meets her again but it’s not a happy ending.  I watched the BBC Stephen Rea tv movie of this and liked it.  I’m not interested in the recent movie as I don’t see why it would merit a PG-13 rating.  

A Doll's House

A teacher I had insisted that Nora was both the antagonist and the protagonist of this story.  Actually, I think that this play could be examined in many ways.  Everyone is a villain in some ways and yes like Nora sometimes to themselves.  Nora is blackmailed by a banker named Krogstad for the forgery of a loan she committed years ago.  The news eventually is found out by her husband.  Nora begins to want to explore her own personal growth instead of what society dictates for a woman.  This was the first Ibsen play I read and I’ve read a number since.  I wish the Jane Fonda version were available as I think she’s a good actress and would pull this off.  

Them Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates’ book begins in an explosive way.  A girl Loretta finds the boy besides her in bed dead.  There’s no doubt it was her brother who killed him.  Then the rest of the book concentrates on her kids Maureen and Jules.  Maureen goes through prostitution and has an affair.  Jules also is questionable.  The book ends with the character Jules participating in the race riots of the 60’s.  I like Joyce Carol Oates stories more but this was all right.  I’ll probably read the other books in the Wonderland Quartet.  

Count d'Orgel's Ball

Raymond Radiguet wrote two books this, and Devil in the Flesh.  I remember liking the later more.  I need to reread it.  Count d’Orgel’s Ball is about Francois, a twenty-year-old who comes from a well to do bourgeois family. He meets the d’Orgels, a distinguished upper-class couple.  Francois finds him attracted to the wife Mahaut.  She likes him as well.  The wife, Francois, and the husband Anne are drawn into a triangle that has devastating effects on the wife.  The author died at 20.  This is pretty distinguished for someone of that age.  Jean Cocteau, a great writer in himself revised this book which says a lot.  

Lisa and Lottie

This German book was the source that the classic Hayley Mills’ movie The Parent Trap was based on.  It mirrors the two in that the girls meet in summer camp and switch places.  Also, there is a prospective woman for the father as well.  Other than that it is different.  The problem is that the composer father spends too much time composing in a studio across town.  He doesn’t spend enough time with his family.  Eventually, everything is resolved and it ends happily ever after.  I like The Parent Trap better though since it’s more spunky.