Telling Tales

by Robert Hanrott and Martha Horsley

Twelve people gather in Canterbury to walk the medieval pilgrim's route from England, across Europe, to Rome. Like the group celebrated by Geoffrey Chaucer in his 14th century Canterbury Tales, they... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0972103554
• ISBN13: 9780972103558
• Release Date: February 2003
• Publisher: ByD Press
• Length: 255 Pages
• Weight: 0.81 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

A Sequel to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

This book is a sequel, if you will, to Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, in which a modern cast of characters tell tales involving very personal episodes in their lives. The authors have written a series of short stories that are at the same time didactic and entertaining. Martha and Bob Hanrott delve into the lives, indeed the very souls, of their characters with an introspection of human nature that is truly alarming. A description of the French countryside as the travelers progress on their journey provides a light diversion as the travelers amble on. The Hanrotts seem to have a handle on their chosen art form, the short story. This is after all what the book is, a series of bedtime short stories, interspersed with an interesting attempt at Chaucerian verse. A good short store will generally have the following characteristics: Believable Have a moral Offer a surprise ending Be entertaining The tales in Telling Tales do not disappoint. My personal favorite was the Lawyer's Tale, but everyone will have their own favorite!

A funny, fast-paced worthy Chaucer Updtate.

"Telling Tales," is more than funny, it's also, by turns, serious, poignant, and occasionally just bawdy enough for the authors to lay claim to kinship with Chaucer's earthy-kindly take on the human condition.The authors have enveloped their cast in a spritzy atmosphere. Chaucer, with whom the authors are obviously well-acquainted, would have appreciated the acerbic wit tinctured with understanding of human folly chronicled in this worthy update of human tenacity in a careening world.The authors' takes are never cloying. For example, demure Shirley the Bureaucrat, part of a world familiar to anyone who ever wedged into a surreal universe of cubicles and flow-chart organizations, played very rough (but fairly.) The authors' energetic muse shines most brightly in the creative quirkiness of their surprise endings. The randy airline pilot, for example, or the herbalist with her secret aphrodisiac recipe -neither goes where you are sure they're headed. It's not giving anything away to note how hilariously fitting is the closing line in the personal trainer's tale: "Hey, I think I'll take one of those cream tarts." I don't usually notice illustrations but the caricatures opening each tale are great, friendly expansions of the wry humor of the tales themselves. The authors do fair justice to Chaucer's appreciation of human joie-de-vivre but they avoid going over the top (or under the bottom, as the case may be.) I liked best Hanrott-Horsleys'using the great author's structure and kindly if skeptical world-view to hold up little mirrors to ourselves and the people we bump into at the gym, on the TV set, at the coffee shop - in short, in life! Cheers for us all!!