Creek Walk and Other Stories

by Molly Giles

Book Overview

In this breathtaking and unforgettable collection of fourteen stories, Molly Giles introduces us to women struggling in the everyday, and in elegant, poignant, and achingly true prose, observes the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 068485287X
• ISBN13: 9780684852874
• Release Date: October 1998
• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.6" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

PAIR THIS WITH "BEAR AND HIS DAUGHTER"

In William Golding's landmark The Lord Of The Flies we weep for "the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart." The heart's blackness is mourned again in two sharply drawn story collections. Despair is their leit motif. Emotionally scarred, the characters in these tales are fragmented by substance abuse, by obdurate personal demons or both. Nonetheless, such unengaging personalities become compelling when presented by a pair of Pulitzer Prize nominees writing at top form. The child of a schizophrenic mother and unknown father, Robert Stone spent three years in an orphanage. Later, as a New Orleans census taker, he walked that city's back streets. With Bear And His Daughter, seven intense tales penned between 1969 and today, he depicts communal deadends and the dissolute souls trapped therein. Begin with "Miserere." A widowed librarian's bitterness becomes a mission to have aborted fetuses receive the church's blessing. Another vignette explores the effects of childhood violence: "The worst of it, Mackay says, was the absence of mercy. Once the punishment began, no amount of crying or pleading would stay the prefect's hand. Each blow followed upon the last, inexorably like the will of God. It was the will of God." The title story sears as it traces the downward spiral of a visit by an alcoholic poet to his drug addicted emotionally deprived daughter. The author's chilling denouement rivals Euripidean tragedies. Robert Stone's writing is edgy, scalpel keen. He probes, cuts, laying back the protective coverings of our human condition. He well knows life's underside. Molly Giles also focuses on the estranged. In her second collection, Creek Walk and Other Stories, she champions passive women, those struggling to be heard. There's no doubt of her theme: "I'm going to talk to you, you know," concludes the violated narrator in "Talking To Strangers." "Whether you're on the beach or in bed with a lover or laughing with friends - I'm going to talk to you all your life until you recognize me and know who I am." Unsaid farewells heighten grief in "Creek Walk": "She was remembering her last morning with Lila, the morning when she should have said, 'I love you,' the morning when she should have said good-bye." An imaginary television interviewer listens to the bourbon soaked rambling of a disoriented wife. Friends parry and pry, attempting to communicate. Mrs. Ardis complains in "The Language Burier" that everything has been stolen from her. Colette, her French daughter-in-law has taken her husband's eyes, her son and, yes, even Mrs. Ardis' voice: "I would open my mouth to tell her something and she would pluck the words out of the air, one by one, and drop them into her apron pocket." Metaphors are wielded adroitly - a turkey vulture hunched over on a fence waiting for his dinner; the slim, soft, bright blue jay feather, a gun barrel rape victim's only defense. At times the women sound similar dissonant notes, yet their

An exquisite, compelling visit with the estranged.

Giles' stories are subtle, bizarre, and believably human. Her versatility comes through beautifully in this collection, though the consistency of her literary ethos is striking. Deliciously comic and tragic.