Woman in a Lampshade

by Elizabeth Jolley

Short stories portray commonplace characters coping with unexpected situations. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140084185
• ISBN13: 9780140084184
• Release Date: November 1986
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Length: 229 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Rich Words and Beautiful Descriptions to Explain the Mystery of the Commonplace

I first read about Elizabeth Jolley in the Sunday New York Times Book Review. Her book of short stories is like finding a smile in the midst of a mundane and harried day. It's a treasure of rich words and beautiful descriptions that explain the mysteries and depths of common people and commonplace experiences. My favorite stories from the collection follow. "Pear Tree Dance" - I found this story totally wonderful. A woman who is known as 'The Newspaper of Claremont Street', works all her life cleaning houses and gossiping. She desperately craves some land of her own. She saves all of her money and buys some rural out-of-the-way acreage and plants a pear tree. "For the first time in her life, the Newspaper of Claremont Street, or Weekly as she was called, was dancing. Stepping round and round the little tree she imagined herself to be like a bride dancing with a lacy white blossom cascading on all sides. Round and round the tree, dancing, firming the softly yielding earth with her new boots. and from the little foil label blowing in the restlessness of evening came a fragile music for the pear tree dance." "The Libation" - A woman, traveling in Vienna, reads the discarded pages of a novel and the dead author's correspondence with an unsympathetic critic. The traveler becomes convinced that the novelist was her lover years ago and the description of the lesbian relationship, theirs. This is portrayed as a mystical journey between here and there - - the real and the imagined. "Woman in a Lampshade" - This is a wonderful story about a quirky woman writer who picks up a young hitchhiker. She takes him to her weekend farm and uses him to throw out ides about her silly novel. She talks at him, not listening to his ideas of wanting to fix up her farm. She wears a lampshade on her head to invite the muse. "The Last Crop" - This story incorporates wonderful imagery of a cleaning woman who lets out the apartments of her rich clients to the poor who have never been exposed to living situations such as these. Some use the apartments to bathe, others make love and once a wedding was held. Overall, the book was spotty, but I was able to overlook this due to the quality of those stories that were wonderful.