This reissue of Grace Paley’s classic collection—a finalist for the National Book Award—demonstrates her rich use of language as...
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Sep 13, 2007
Mike
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the stories are small in scale--domestic settings; blocks, neighborhood playgrounds--but she fills them with rich, aphoristic asides that are not only cosmically wise but really funny. it's interesting, for all the second-person, interiority-oriented writing, paley's stories are fundamentally social. you get to know the characters, sure, but you never really feel inside them, you only have the pleasure of sharing the room with them. the best part is that none of them are outrightly exceptional;
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Feb 15, 2011
Melissa
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Grace Paley – The Collected Stories
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1994
The late Grace Paley was a woman filled with life and experiences bursting from every seam. The Collected Stories is praised as a finely polished group of Paley’s short stories that let the reader into the small, everyday moments of her life, however the stories did not entirely live up to their reputation. They are certainly a window into a conversation over eggs in the kitchen, or a loving moment between mothe More...
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1994
The late Grace Paley was a woman filled with life and experiences bursting from every seam. The Collected Stories is praised as a finely polished group of Paley’s short stories that let the reader into the small, everyday moments of her life, however the stories did not entirely live up to their reputation. They are certainly a window into a conversation over eggs in the kitchen, or a loving moment between mothe More...
Oct 31, 2009
Shane
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This wasn't an easy book to read, as the style was very spoken-stream of consciousness, as if the various narrators were involved in a fragmented dialogue with their readers. I guess it was a new style for its time - I am not sure however that it can endure. In the end I want a story.
I found some of the shorter pieces began in one place and landed somewhere completely diffferent, with new information provided just before they ended, thereby altering the traditional structure of story More...
I found some of the shorter pieces began in one place and landed somewhere completely diffferent, with new information provided just before they ended, thereby altering the traditional structure of story More...
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Sep 04, 2007
Jenna
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I can't believe it took me so long to read Grace Paley. She passes away a couple weeks ago, and having tackled just a small percentage of her work up to this point, I can truly comprehend the loss felt by the literary world. So strong, so ahead of her time. One of those writers who make you feel like you never really understood how good a sentence could be.
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Dec 30, 2011
Saxon
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Paley's stories revolve around the everyday lives of everyday people with a focus on women and yiddish culture in NYC. While she only wrote short stories, reoccurring characters constantly appear adding a level of cohesive continuity with each each story. Almost all of the stories take place around World War 2 and after all the way up to the mid 60s leading to socio-political themes that undercut each piece. However, this isn't Paley's MO. She's interested in the real lives of real people and na
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Aug 11, 2009
Kylin
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What I like best about Paley's stories are her cut-to-the-chase descriptions that give so much information in relatively few words. For example: "Her forehead was damp, mouth slightly open between drags, a furious and sweaty face, hardly made up except around the eyes, but certainly cared for, cheeks scrubbed and eyebrows brushed, a lifetime's deposit of vitamins, the shiny daughter of cash in the bank.... I took her cigarette and killed it between forefinger and thumb. Then she looked at m
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Jan 10, 2012
Tom
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Grace Paley's Collected Stories is actually something I have been reading on and off for a long time time now. That is my favourite way of reading short stories, as an aside or something to dip into from time to time. I must say I enjoyed Paley's stories immensely. In the collection you get the added benefit that, while each story is a discrete entity, the book forms a unified whole. The stories are interconnected and reading each yields a greater understanding of those before.
Read t More...
Read t More...
Jun 22, 2010
Sarah
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Spring is a great time to be reading Grace Paley. Her skittish snapshots of lives lived in (often cheerful) disarray woke my brain right out of its winter hibernation. These aren’t stories to curl up with on a cold evening, although there’s real warmth to Paley’s writing; you need all your wits about you as a reader, to get the most out of this collection.
Two short sad stories from a long and happy life: A subject of childhood tells of a moment in the life of Faith, a woman who reap More...
Two short sad stories from a long and happy life: A subject of childhood tells of a moment in the life of Faith, a woman who reap More...
Nov 18, 2008
Xconx
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I really enjoyed reading these stories, especially the earliest and the latest. In the earliest, the language has the sound of sentences first constructed in Russian then translated into English, but with words selected from a Thesaurus, never those a native speaker would choose. But that gives a fresh perspective on what is said. It is interesting that the first story is about Aunt Rose, pitied by her married sister for not having a husband. Rose tells her story and it is significant, I thi
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Feb 10, 2008
jesse
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Oh, as time went on, as our responsibilities increased, we didn't go in need. You took adaquate financial care, I reminded him. The children went to camp four weeks a year and in decent ponchos with sleeping bags and boots, just like everyone else. They looked very nice. Our place was warm in winter, and we had nice red pillows and things.
I wanted a sailboat, he said. But you didn't want anything.
Don't be bitter, I said. It's never too late.
No, he said w More...
I wanted a sailboat, he said. But you didn't want anything.
Don't be bitter, I said. It's never too late.
No, he said w More...
Jul 15, 2010
Baiocco
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I loved this. I loved this woman. I want to take her out to dinner and talk to her fight some jerk thats being noisy at the table next to us, for her.
I didn't read all the stories collected herein, but everything from "Little Disturbances of Man" and "Enormous Changes at the Last MInute" are treasures. Her narrators are as bold and precocious as anyone you'd ever find in Brett Easton Ellis, a truly inquisitive mind at work, examining the psychological spaces o More...
I didn't read all the stories collected herein, but everything from "Little Disturbances of Man" and "Enormous Changes at the Last MInute" are treasures. Her narrators are as bold and precocious as anyone you'd ever find in Brett Easton Ellis, a truly inquisitive mind at work, examining the psychological spaces o More...
Nov 21, 2008
Robin
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This was the book that my book club read and discussed for November. There were only 7 of us at the meeting but we happily talked about a writer that we all feel like we should have read years ago who introduces readers to a different part of American life: women who are caring for their children in the 1940s in New York City. Grace Paley's stories aren't necessarily happy but, as one member discovered, they do have hope in them. She read a review that mentioned that and dug deep into a story an
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Jun 09, 2008
Elizabeth
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While Grace Paley's style is unique and fascinating for a time, after getting about half way through this collection it became quite clear to me I wasn't going to make it -- and I NEVER start reading a book without finishing. I had expected her subject matter to be of great interest to me -- she was a Jewish feminist 20th century writer, and all of her stories take place in New York City. But I found the stories so depressing and her view of life to be so devoid of meaning, that I simply could n
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Jan 05, 2009
Susann
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It's cliche to talk of Paley's unique voice, but her words sound like no others. These stories are denser than I remember and more playful of time. I had also forgotten the few very bleak stories, but most have threads of hope and of people (mothers, mainly) trying to muddle through the best they can. I particularly like the political mothers fighting school boards and draft boards. So many quotable lines, but here's just one:
"Though the world cannot be changed by talking to one child More...
"Though the world cannot be changed by talking to one child More...
Jan 25, 2011
Andrew
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I'm not a fan of short stories in general (too much work to get into the world of each one, then it's done...) But read a bunch of these short stories and was really impressed -- her mastery of a sentence and of character is really impressive, they're sometimes a little abstract (ie hard to know exactly what's going on plotwise) but they're colorful, the dialogue is snappy, etc. -- definitely worth sampling.
Jan 29, 2008
Julia
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Paley has an incredible wit and a talent for expressing the complex political nature of women's lives. I loved her stories because they are simultaneously hysterical and sad, kind of like life in general. My favorite book growing up was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and I think I like Paley because she resonates with me in the same way as ATGIB did, only I've grown up since then and Paley reflects this process of maturation. They both tell the story of "old New York," from the 1930s, to
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Nov 21, 2010
Jeremy
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And I don't even like short stories. She is so good. I saw her read at the Printer's Row Book Fair and got hooked. Every story is completely alive in its own way, all these odd little animals staring up at you. The one about her friend George, the inventor, is essentially about how I view my own self and my work.
Nov 10, 2010
Jacob
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Some short fiction is meant to be devoured, consumed; other stories should be taken in small doses and savored. Grace Paley’s stories feel like the second kind, but I mistook them for the first. It’s become a habit of mine, reading through my large (and growing) library of story collections, to read one or two per day, which is fine for the smaller collections. But any group of thirty or forty or more, as with Paley’s Collected Stories, starts to feel like more of a chore than an enjoyable re
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Apr 19, 2011
Ted
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Grace Paley tells wonderful stories that leave you in the middle, wondering what the hell happened. For a writer, she's the master class in what to say and what to withhold. And such a voice! The Bronx births great storytellers and she's one of the best.
Oct 05, 2009
Donna
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This author was new to me. She is referenced in some of Anne LaMott's work. I am completely hooked on Grace Paley. This book is priceless. Her ability to draw you in quickly to a short story through intense character developement is wonderful.
Jul 04, 2011
Ursula K LeGuin in her book "Steering the Craft" recommended reading Grace Paley for a good example in point-of-view.
Jun 06, 2011
Joannedespres
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Brilliantly written, rather stark and unillusioned, informed by feminist and political consciousness.
Apr 28, 2009
Fearless writer. She did whatever she wanted on the page, and she made the reader like it.
Jun 14, 2009
Emilie
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not even finished yet, 5 star rating. this book -this author-is amazing!
Mar 03, 2010
Shek
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I'll just echo everyone else on Paley and note that she has a surpassing ear for dialects and accents, and reflects them in dialogue as well as or better than any other major author. My eyes tend to glaze over when she spends much time on her American socialist motifs, which is too often for my taste, but when she's on, her stories are frighteningly good.
Retreating to my general dislike of post-modernist fiction, I'll say I'm not sure Don Barthelme was a good influence on Paley's la More...
Retreating to my general dislike of post-modernist fiction, I'll say I'm not sure Don Barthelme was a good influence on Paley's la More...
