I think I prefer short stories to any other form of literature-good short stories, that is.
So when Elizabeth Routen contacted me, inviting me to review her collection in its online form, I did not expect to be satisfied enough to sit at a computer long enough, and asked her to send me, instead, a hard copy.
And she replied promptly, and soon after, a bound galleyproof arrived.
And I asked her for a picture of the cover, so that I could get an impression of what other readers would experience, and she sent that, too.
And then I read the stories, slowly, over a few nights.
And then I read as much of her biography as the book provides, and looked for more online , and then wrote to her again, because everything I had found seemed to suggest she is only 21, that these stories were begun in 1997, when she was 17. And I knew that could not be possible!
And she replied promptly, as usual, and amused I think, to confirm that she is, indeed, only 21, and that this is a bad age to be because she is just now finding grammatical rules she was unaware of, and errors she has been making for years.
Well, readers, I taught grammar and creative writing for years, and I would be very interested indeed to find out where this young lady was educated, because this is one of the best collections of well-put-together-words that I have ever read, and as a librarian responsible for selection and acquisitions I have read a LOT!
And If Elizabeth Routen is a product of the much-denigrated American school system, I am going to shut my ears to the prophesies of literary doom and gloom so prevalent today and say that someone, somewhere is doing something very right!
And as a dabbler in words myself, I am going to eat my quill pen and go back to knitting and cooking because I cannot write as well as this lass can..not after 40 years of reading,studying and polishing. And when I was 17, though I showed promise at putting words together, I did not SEE people as Elizabeth Routen does; I had NOT the incredible insight into how people think and feel that Elizabeth exhibits. This, to use the old cliche, is an old head on young shoulders.
There are 33 stories and a final poem in the collection.
I like short stories to be polished prose pieces , evocative of phrase and thoughtprovoking.
I am not often easily satisfied.
NO two are alike, yet there is a common thread, a sadness, a reflective melancholy throughout, as though insight into the human condition, for Elizabeth, has not been a fun-filled diorama. These are real people,the people we see every day, through a glass, darkly: waitresses, bereaved mothers, dying children, unfulfilled wives,humiliated fathers, lonely old people. Nor are these stories just about society's misfits, society's failures-- the broken marriages, the disfunctional families, the victims. Rather, Elizabeth uses the whole layer of human flotsam as her canvas-- the winners as well as the losers; the triumphant and the defeated, and the merely existing. And so deftly are the sights and sounds in each character's world created for us that the reader is granted a brief, pinhole view into that person's existence, so vivid and clear a view that we are left considering, reflecting, questioning, and, often, identifying and empathising.Short stories don't come much better than this, and I was VERY satisfied!
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