Sunday, February 14, 2016

Minnie's Room, by Mollie Panter-Downes - or, my problem with short stories

The subtitle of this collection is "The Peacetime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes." Persephone has of course also published a collection of her war-time stories, Good Evening, Mrs. Craven (which I wrote about here).

I may have mentioned this before, but I don't read a lot of short stories. For me, the reason is right there in the name: they're too short. They often feel slight, insubstantial, unsatisfying. It seems like I hardly have time to get to know the characters before their story is over. I'm almost always left wanting to know more. I suspect this is partly because I grew up reading books rather than story collections, and books in long series with continuing characters to boot. There was always another book, more to their story. The short stories I did read were generally mysteries, like Encyclopedia Brown or The Three Investigators, where the resolution of the mystery brought closure to the story - and where the characters then went off to their next adventure. As I look at my shelves today, I find only a handful of short-story collections, generally by authors whose novels I treasure (Anthony Trollope, P.G. Wodehouse, Dorothy Canfield, Connie Willis). Kipling would be another exception, at least for The Just-So Stories and The Jungle Books (some of which I still have to read, with his adult stories).

I bought a copy of Minnie's Room because I enjoyed Mollie Panter-Downes's novel One Fine Day and the war-time stories - and also because I was ordering a copy of London War Notes (still unread). The Persephone "Publisher's Note" points out that these ten stories, published in The New Yorker between 1947 and 1965, "are acute descriptions of a class and a nation in decline." They "explore this theme of the English middle class struggling to live in the same way that it had enjoyed before the war."

All of the stories are of course well-written, and even in just a few pages Panter-Downes manages to make her characters come alive to the reader. The stories I found most compelling were the two written in the first person, "What Are the Wild Waves Saying?" and "Intimations of Mortality." The second is about a young child and her nurse, Kate, who "supplied me...with vast quantities of tender, uncritical love, for which I was never sufficiently grateful..." One day, the unnamed narrator accompanies Kate to a shabby apartment, where an old woman lies ill. We see the scene through the child's eyes, narrated by her older self, understanding more than the child and even the adult narrator. "Beside the Still Waters" concerns adult children with an elderly mother needing care, and having been through a similar situation with my mother, I found their story felt very real, and timeless.

It is possible of course that I just haven't met the right authors of short stories, so as always recommendations are welcome.

16 comments:

  1. I also struggle with short stories. They are just so...short. However, I have been debating buying this collection since One Fine Day is a book I am a bit evangelical about and I want to read more of Mollie Panter-Downes writing. I have already read the wartime stories and London War Notes and there isn't much else left. I do wish she had written more novels.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jennifer, doesn't the "wartime stories" book mention her earlier novels? I can't figure out if she suppressed them later, or if they've just disappeared into "out of print."

      If you have a New Yorker subscription, you can trawl through their archives (on-line) for all her pieces. I've considered it :)

      Delete
  2. I find that some writers have the knack of writing stories - catching something that feels exactly right in that form - but many don't however well they may write. Frances Towers (Tea With Mr Rochester) is my recommendation from the Persephone list next time you're shopping; but in the meantime I am quite sure you will be much more taken with the London War Notes.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jane, I've marked Tea with Mr Rochester in the Persephone catalogue. And I'm sure I'll love London War Notes - I'm determined not to get bogged down in taking notes this time.

      Delete
  3. Like you, I'm not a fan of short stories, but I keep reading them in the hope of discovering some that I do like. I remember enjoying Mollie Panter-Downes' wartime stories so I should probably try the peacetime stories too.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I did enjoy the wartime stories, partly because I'm always interested in the home front during World War II.

      Delete
  4. I'm not a huge short story reader...about the only ones I've ever really enjoyed are Dorothy Parker's short stories. But even then, I don't love them all. Oh, and there are two Edith Wharton short stories that I think are hilarious...but for the most part I'd rather read a novel. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I do have The Portable Dorothy Parker, and some of those stories are classic. Some of them are painful to read too, but I love "The Little Hours" :)

      Delete
  5. I'm another who doesn't choose to read short stories but when I had to for a course I was teaching I did learn to value the very best in the genre. I would advise buying a well reviewed anthology where you can be fairly sure that one of a writer's best examples has been selected and see which author's appeal before buying a collection by any single author.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's a great suggestion, Alex, thanks. From reading The New Yorker, I think I might look at older collections - a lot of the newest ones I read there are just lost on me.

      Delete
  6. I love short stories--not that I don't series and long tomes too--but the genre is so appealing because the good ones are so powerful. The writing is crisp and you can get to nuances of character with just a phrase, and the ending usually packs a wallop. I think a classic is Roman Fever by Edith Wharton. I read this just before my trip to Italy last fall, and now mean to go back and read the rest in the collection. I like ss collections that have an integrated theme--like the one Maeve Binchey did about people who lived along the same subway line in London. You got glimpses of different characters in the different stories but each had their chance to have their own story told. Olive Kitteridge is really a collection of short stories, in my opinion, as are Edw Rutherford's books. Minnie's Room sounds like something I would definitely like.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I've enjoyed the thematic collections as well - I remember "The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing." I don't think I've come across that Binchy collection, and I will keep an eye out for it. Edward Rutherford's books are so big that I hadn't thought of them as "short" stories :) I need to move London up the reading pile.

      Delete
  7. When I have liked short stories, I've found it's typically scifi/fantasy ones. Because with those, the premise can be enough to carry the story, even if I don't get to go very deep into the characters and who they are and what this world is. So I like Nalo Hopkinson and Neil Gaiman as short story writers, and that's...kind of it? So far? Not very good recommending by me! :p

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's a thought - maybe trying a different genre. Mystery stories work kind of the same way for me - I'd forgotten how many of Agatha Christie's short stories I'd read. I know Neil Gaiman's name, but not Nalo Hopkinson - something for my next trip to the library and/or Barnes & Noble.

      Delete
  8. So glad short crime stories got a mention above - I think they can work really well. Also anything so quirky in theme that a whole book would be maddening -- that's when I want it in a short story! ;-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I could see that as well - in fantasy, say. And I can think of a couple of characters that are too much in a long book, but might be more tolerable in brief :)

      Delete

Thank you for taking the time to read, and to comment. I always enjoy hearing different points of view about the books I am reading, even if we disagree!