To summarise our comments - most of us felt that short stories did not work well although we enjoyed some of them (the title story being one of the favourites) and thought they should have been expanded to develop characters and plot more. We think she is a very creative writer and admire her sense of imagination and story telling (although the re-work of Rumpelstilstkin was considered a bit of a cheat). We appreciated the fascination of the blurring of two worlds - human and Faerie - especially in stories like Mrs Mabb.
But, in comparison to the epic JS&MN this collection did not fare well and there was some cynicism amongst the group about the fact that the stories had been gathered together for publication on the back of the success of the former (although noted that some of the stories pre-date the novel.This is the first post on this Red Deer Readers blog - hope it is not the last!!
Jan
x
As about the only one who really didn't enjoy JSMN, I was not looking forward to The Ladies. I appreciated the craft of JSMN but consider that the short story was insufficiently able to support a similar rich evocation of Faerie. Mrs Mabb was more succesful in portraying the interweaving of Faerie and England but too obviously re-used a dominant theme from JSMN - the worn out shoes.
ReplyDeleteI would need some convincing that these stories were not early try-outs that the publisher has cynically sought to make money from.
The couple of highlighted Jane Austen-esque moments were, admitedly, amusing. However, Tom Brightwind is surely horrified at the trees culled for this pulp whimsy.
Woops, forgot to add that I think that was a good summary Jan.
ReplyDeleteI knew I'd be away for this one but intended to read it as I enjoyed JS&MN so much. Having read Jan's blog and Karl's comments I think I'll give it as miss and wait for the next book from Ms Clark.
ReplyDeleteYes, really good summary although as the one thumbs upper am impervious to all criticisms (not really, I agree with Karl about Tom Brightwind!)Well done, Jan!
ReplyDeletexx(amd to EJ for making the blog poss!)
xx
Karl, how do you get a piccy on?
ReplyDeleteG
x
Sign in - that takes you to Dashboard. Click on Edit profile and somewhere on there you can add a picture from your hard disk.
ReplyDeleteSorry i couldn't make it the other night but thanks for setting this up Jan, it makes my efforts at reading the book the weekend before the meeting not entirely wasted.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds as though my views on the book were shared by others. I also thought it seemed as though some of the stories were edited out sections of JSMN - i wonder if the editor put their foot down when she got a 1000 pages? Some of the stories were more enjoyable than others although i thought they were too brief and if you hadn't read JSMN previously you'd struggle to make sense of the landscape they were set in.
Just over a week since we were discussing 'The Ladies' and the stories seem really distant already. I didn't read JSMN when everyone else did but am reading it at the moment, and everything about it seems so much more developed. Some of the stories in 'The Ladies' are quirky and have some great writing, but a lot of it is hardly memorable.
ReplyDelete