Reviews for Performance Matters

The average rating for Performance Matters based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-12-13 00:00:00 Chris Guevara Manguel is a well known anthologist. For this volume, he has selected writers from around the world. Many are very well known including: Truman Capote, Graham Greene, Vladamir Nabokov, and William Trevor. Contemporary writers include Paul Auster, Ann Beattie, Richard Ford and Jeannette Winterson. My favorite stories were Trevor's "Another Christmas", Grace Paley's "The Loudest Voice" and Jeannette Winterson's "O'Brien's First Christmas". Trevor's story of an Irish couple who move from Waterford to London tells of a rift that occurs with their landlord, Mr. Joyce, an English man (possibly of Irish descent). They had weekly shared tea on Friday nights and discussed the news - it was 1978, the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. They all condemn the bombings. Then one day, Dermot, the husband, and deeply religious and devout Catholic, added to their discussion of the latest bombing, you shouldn't forget what the Catholics of the North had suffered and that the crimes of the bombings wouldn't have happened if generations of them hadn't been treated like animals. Paley's story is about a young Jewish girl from an immigrant family in New York selected to act in the Christmas story pageant because she has the loudest voice. The hilarity of the story is although her mother is appalled, her father sees it as a way into understanding the beliefs of a different culture. Winterson's story is pure whimsy and tells the story of a lonely woman who is a store clerk and how her life magically changes - just wonderful.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-10-03 00:00:00 Terence Butts I read this over the course of several years, a handful of stories each holiday season. There are some very unusual choices, including some that really have hardly anything to do with Christmas (e.g. the one by Bessie Head). Still, it's a nice book to have to hand, even if just to skip through. Manguel strikes a good balance between well-known short story writers (Mavis Gallant, William Trevor and Alice Munro), authors you might never think to associate with Christmas (Paul Auster, Richard Ford and Vladimir Nabokov), and fairly obscure works in translation (Theodore Odrach, Sergio Ramírez and Itoh Seikoh). Four favorites: "A Christmas Memory," Truman Capote (overall favorite) "Christmas Is a Sad Season for the Poor," John Cheever "The Zoo at Christmas," Jane Gardam "O'Brien's First Christmas," Jeanette Winterson