Reviews for Piazza Tales

The average rating for Piazza Tales based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-08-19 00:00:00 Tiffany Creech This collection consists of the following short stories of Herman Melville: ✨ Piazza - Really enjoyed this tale about the contrast between imagination and reality. Perhaps the old adage "the grass is always greener on the other side" would apply here. Melville writes with beautiful, flowing descriptions. 4-stars ✨ Bartleby - The infamous scrivener who would "prefer not to". I have posted a separate review for this story. 5-stars ✨ Benito Cereno - Uncomfortable read about mutiny on a slave ship. I have posted a separate review for this story. 4-stars ✨ The Lightning-Rod Man - Just a strange little short story. 2.5-stars ✨ The Encantadas - Sketches of the Galapagos Islands. Melville plays to his strength here, which is the power of description. However, I felt these sketches went on far too long and became somewhat boring. 3-stars ✨ The Bell-Tower - A strange, macabre tale of artist, creation, and overstepping the bounds. 3.5-stars I give the overall collection 4-stars because it includes two of Melville's very best shorts.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-08-04 00:00:00 Curtis Bottoms I have been studiously avoiding Melville's Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, which is on the 1001 list. The members of the group reading that list here on Goodreads have a sort of love/hate reaction to it; one of the things most often mentioned against it is the writing style. I decided I could preview that style by reading some of the author's shorter fiction. The title story is the one I liked best. The language and style are poetic, and the story lends itself quite well in that direction. Bartleby, The Scrivener is said to be a story of loneliness. Benito Cereno started rather slow, but was a great adventure tale which I like best after The Piazza. the Lightning-Rod man was very short - an example (to me) of one's need to resist false sales pitches. The Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles, was not to my liking at all, and unfortunately, was the longest of the six stories. It might have done well in its time, but there are many documentaries now on the Galapagos, so that I was not unfamiliar with both the scenery and some of the stories. The Bell Tower was, well, different than stories I might pick up on my own. The GR description calls these short stories. I think that is half true. Half of them are what I would think of as short stories and the other half amble toward novella. I'm glad to have read them, but I didn't like them well enough to pick up Moby Dick. Perhaps some day, but that day won't be soon.