Reviews for Erin's orange lily; and, Summer loanen and other stories

The average rating for Erin's orange lily; and, Summer loanen and other stories based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-01-10 00:00:00 Joseph Shapiro The first part of this edition was published separately in 1956. The nine short essays, as appealing as short stories, are from the author's time gathering folklore in the North of Ireland. Each one brings together a few anecdotes on a single topic, such as the Lambeg drum and poitin making. The gathering project sought to preserve stories from traditions fast disappearing, stories from the 19th century. Each chapter has a storytelling tone and is especially of interest to those whose ancestors were from Ulster because some of the traditions and terms are peculiar to Ulster. For example in the rest of Ireland a small road is a boreen, but in Ulster, it's a loanen. The second part of this edition is the author's first short-story collection, published in 1943. There is a gentle tone and charm here, some lovely vignettes, such as the title story, in which two country boys and a country girl have a day of joy playing all around the neighbourhood; there's the seedy side of life in "Dark Tenement" and broken hearts and dashed hopes in "The Broken Tree" and "A Fish Without Chips." What would an Irish book be without broken hearts and dashed hopes? But there is happiness and surprise, too. "Two Blades of Grass" has some fun in it when a man pays his respects to the wrong dead woman, and ""Thursday Nights" shows a young woman learning a quick and precious lesson. It's a pleasant volume to read, altogether.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-07-06 00:00:00 Melissa Aragon I read a story in this, to knock it off my "to read" list, and am porting over another review from an anthology as the story also appears here. Weldon strikes me as an interesting writer of dark lit, or at least the stories I was directed to (as a reader of horror and the macabre) fall into that area (it may not be true of her fuller output) - writing in the 70s (at least the stories I read), fiercely feminist in a second-wave mode (although someone on Goodreads refers to her as an "anti-feminist feminist" which without knowing details just implies to me that she has the good sense to reject extremes and absolutes), and surprisingly able to note and trenchantly convey passive-aggression and what are no-called "micro-aggressions" (a term I'm not comfortable with as its moved beyond it initial definition into a broader, generalized pop-culture one, but still valid when used correctly). Weldon has a nicely light and breezy style, conversational and informal. Not "horror" stories in the traditional sense, although they do convey disturbing interpersonal relationships and petty cruelty. "A Good Sound Marriage" - which I read in The Mammoth Book of 20th Century Ghost Stories (given its inclusion in that book, it should come as not surprise that this is not a horror story but instead a lit story in which the "ghost" is a device). Here, a pregnant newlywed suffers through her worries and upset at her husband's absence, only to be visited by the ghost of her wise Grandmother who gives her some life-lived tips about what it means to be a woman, a wife and a mother in this world. A solid lit piece, well-written, if a bit "speechy." "Through A Dustbin, Darkly" - a new wife is informed by her (thoughtless, juvenile) artist husband's circle of shallow friends of the details surrounding the demise of his previous wife, which they all treat as her own fault and something of a joke. But as the new wife settles in to her new home, the previous wife's unhappiness still seems to linger about the place and, heavily pregnant, the new wife begins to realize just how shallow her husband is, and how she's vaguely being warned. Nice.