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Astray

by Emma Donoghue (Goodreads Author)

3.62 of 5 stars 3.62 · rating details · 1,612 ratings · 402 reviews

The fascinating characters that roam across the pages of Emma Donoghue's stories have all gone astray: they are emigrants, runaways, drifters, lovers old and new. They are gold miners and counterfeiters, attorneys and slaves. They cross other borders too: those of race, law, sex, and sanity. They travel for love or money, incognito or under duress.

With rich historical deta...more

Hardcover, 274 pages

Published October 30th 2012 by Little, Brown and Company (first published January 1st 2012)

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Jan 21, 2013 Sky *A Booknatic* rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: first-reads, historical-fiction, short-stories

-Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/Thebooknatics --

I received this book through the Goodreads Giveaways, it was one of those books that captivated me from the start and just couldn’t put down at all.

Emma Donoghue has taken real historic stories of people on the run or departed for adventure and love, and turned them into a work of art, almost like behind-the-scenes action. Her imagination takes us for a spin on the untold stories of beloved documented events of everyday people who left an...more

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Apr 01, 2013 Sandra rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: canlit, read-2012

This story collection has had a powerful effect upon me and has left a residue such as I have not experienced previously after short story collections.

The epigraph:
Tell us underneath what skies,
Upon what coasts of earth we have been cast;
We wander, ignorant of men and places,
And driven by the wind and the vast waves.
Virgil, The Aeneid,
translated by Allen Mandelbaum (1971)
Contents
Departures 1
Man and Boy 5
Onward 23
The Widow's Cruse 43
Last Supper at Brown's 65

In Transit 73
Counting t...more

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May 04, 2013 Matthew Lippart rated it 2 of 5 stars

This is a collection of short stories around a few themes (loss, abandonment, etc etc) which are all pretty well summed up by the main title. These are considered "historical" I suppose, because they are based on actual people, letters, places, and so forth. I thought the stories were pretty good. Like most collections, you have a pretty wide range here- my favorite being the one about the two young men panning for gold. So if you are into period pieces, you might wanna check this out.

I did have...more

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Apr 22, 2013 pjreads ♫ rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: stories

From the Afterword:

"Unease. Wonder. Melancholy. Irritation. Relief. Shame. Absentmindedness. Nostalgia. Self-righteousness. Guilt. Travelers know all the confusion of the human condition in concentrated form. Migration is mortality by another name, the itch we can't scratch. Perhaps because moving far away to some arbitrary spot simply highlights the arbitrariness on getting born into this particular body in the first place: this contingent selfhood, this sole life."

This quote because I'm strugg...more

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Mar 19, 2013 meeners rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-stories, history

like emma donoghue's earlier collection the woman who gave birth to rabbits, astray spins stray headlines and fragments of historical documents into vignettes that are sometimes contemplative, sometimes startling, and sometimes quite beautiful. i hesitate to call these stories "historical fiction," because the draw is really in the tension between the historical and the fictional, the known and the speculative.

part of me, too, resists the idea that fiction is somehow more worthy of our (literary...more like emma donoghue's earlier collection the woman who gave birth to rabbits, astray spins stray headlines and fragments of historical documents into vignettes that are sometimes contemplative, sometimes startling, and sometimes quite beautiful. i hesitate to call these stories "historical fiction," because the draw is really in the tension between the historical and the fictional, the known and the speculative.

part of me, too, resists the idea that fiction is somehow more worthy of our (literary) attention than history, or that the people represented in these stories are not worthy or capable of speaking for themselves (rather than through the exalted medium of the literary writer). hence the 3 stars - could never let myself get enthralled with this collection the way 4-star reads let me do. but in most of the cases in astray, it's not that the subjects cannot/will not speak, it's that we (as contemporary readers) have lost the means/ability to hear their voices in full. "historical fiction": it's a fine line to walk. but i think emma donoghue does it with sensitivity and a real talent for imagining her subjects the way they might have imagined themselves. maybe that's the best one could hope for, in a book like this. i don't mean that to sound dismissive, it's in fact quite the opposite - emma donoghue is doing an important and difficult thing here. in the end, would recommend the book to anyone who likes the take-away message from the afterword:

Unease. Wonder. Melancholy. Irritation. Relief. Shame . . . Migration is mortality by another name, the itch we can't scratch. Perhaps because moving far away to some arbitrary spot simply highlights the arbitrariness of getting born into this particular body in the first place: this contingent selfhood, this sole life.

Writing stories is my way of scratching that itch: my escape from the claustrophobia of individuality. It lets me, at least for a while, live more than one life, walk more than one path. Reading, of course, can do the same.

May the road rise with you.(less)

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Jan 23, 2013 Lis rated it 5 of 5 stars

Emma Donoghue has a wonderful ability to "take you there" - to make the almost-unimaginable seem real, tangible, actual. I first experienced this with her novel ROOM - so when I saw this book listed, I ordered it, even though I am not always a fan of short stories. (their scope seems so limited! not true in this case.)

All of these stories are based on real events or circumstances in history: sometimes just a line or scrap she found in a newspaper, sometimes a few bits of correspondence - Donoghu...more Emma Donoghue has a wonderful ability to "take you there" - to make the almost-unimaginable seem real, tangible, actual. I first experienced this with her novel ROOM - so when I saw this book listed, I ordered it, even though I am not always a fan of short stories. (their scope seems so limited! not true in this case.)

All of these stories are based on real events or circumstances in history: sometimes just a line or scrap she found in a newspaper, sometimes a few bits of correspondence - Donoghue fleshes them out with people who come alive. Her writing is spare and clear, and some of these stories will break your heart. I highly recommend it (and now I'll recommend anything she writes: she CAN WRITE!!)

Story examples [mild spoiler alert, though knowing "what happened" would not spoil these stories]:
- the elephant Jumbo, who has been in a London zoo, is being exported to the US circus of Barnum & Bailey
- a young Irish mother/sister struggles to support her child & her brother through prostitution - and is funded to go to Canada by Charles Dickens (! true, apparently)
- a young "widow" sells all her husband's belongings and leaves town, just as he returns from a trip
- a young slave in Texas kills his owner before he can be sold, then leaves with the owner's wife (who helped)
- a young Irish mother sails across the Atlantic with her two children to join their father/husband in Quebec - just as he succumbs to cholera
- two young men partner up, prospecting for gold in a Yukon winter
- a tough young woman in Texas, dressed as a man (but not pretending to be one) captures a runaway husband and returns him to his wife.
- some crooks try to steal Lincoln's coffin in Chicago
- a young widow gives her child to the NY Children's aid because she can't support her; later her circumstances improve but she can't get the child back
- a lonesome Pilgrim settled in Cape Cod denounces others for sinning.
- a young Creole girl in Louisiana explores a trunk in the attic, along with her family's secrets
- British soldiers rape all the women in a US settlement in an incident during the 1776 war
- a woman discovers that her "father" - a well-known political figure in turn-of-the-last-century New York - was actually a man.
- two elderly women, known for their sculptures - are now in a nursing home.

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Dec 21, 2012 Shannon rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-stories, historical-fiction

While I am not typically a fan of short stories, Astray showed me how rich this literary form can be in the hands of an excellent writer. Donoghue's Room was such a good read that I was compelled to give this book a try. I'm so glad I did. (On top of being thankful for the kind librarian who let me exceed my book limit to check it out.)

My main complaint with short stories has been the lack of character development. I often read books to get to know the people between their pages. What I found ou...more

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Dec 17, 2012 Luanne Ollivier rated it 5 of 5 stars

My first Emma Donoghue book was The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits - a short story collection built on historical tidbits and facts that was released in 2002. I've enjoyed many more titles from Donoghue since - Slammerkin remains a favorite. I was thrilled to see that her latest book Astray was again a collection of short stories with their origins found in obscure historical realities.

In this latest collection Donoghue explores all the ways a life, a person, a path can go astray...." on and of...more My first Emma Donoghue book was The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits - a short story collection built on historical tidbits and facts that was released in 2002. I've enjoyed many more titles from Donoghue since - Slammerkin remains a favorite. I was thrilled to see that her latest book Astray was again a collection of short stories with their origins found in obscure historical realities.

In this latest collection Donoghue explores all the ways a life, a person, a path can go astray...." on and off, for the past decade and a half, I've been writing stories about travels to, within, and occasionally from the United States and Canada. Most of these travelers are real people who left traces in the historical record; a few are characters I've invented to put a face on real incidents of border crossing. Many of them stray in several senses, when in the course of their journeys across geographical and political boundaries they find themselves stepping over other ones: law, sex, or race. Emigrants, immigrants, adventurers, and runaways - they fascinate me because they loiter on the margins, stripped of the markers of family and nation; they're out of place, out of their depth."

The places and times of the stories in Astray are varied, ranging from London to New York to Texas to Canada and more and ranging from the 1600's to the 900's. Donoghue is able to write with different voices and outlooks, providing a fresh and unique outlook with every exploration.

It's hard to pick favourites, but I think Counting the Days - the story of a reluctant emigre and her husband who went ahead stayed with me. As did The Gift - a series of letters from a mother trying to find her child.

I absolutely adored this book. Each story was a little glimpse into a life gone before - a reminder of a life, a moment, a time. At the end of each, Donoghue provides us with the 'real' details - the names, the times and the places that these people inhabited. I found myself stopping after each tale, savouring what I'd read and wondering about what might have happened next for those captured by Donoghue's imagination. In a few cases, my interest piqued, I went online and did some research of my own. And, I also stopped in an effort to make the book last longer - I didn't want it to end. Looking for a book to spend that gift card on? Look no further.(less)

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Nov 25, 2012 Amy rated it 4 of 5 stars

It is a rare short story that can captivate the reader, present fully developed characters that maintain the reader’s interest, and present a completely satisfying story arch in a limited amount of pages; yet Emma Donoghue’s latest collection of stories, Astray, manages to do just that in all fourteen stories. In each of the stories, the characters have all gone astray; from the homes that they have always known, from the rules of society, from convention and even from the law. Donoghue also tak...more

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Oct 20, 2012 Tasha Robinson rated it 3 of 5 stars

The latest anthology from the author of "Room" has an intriguing premise —vignettes and very short stories spun out from old news items and historical records —but the stories Donoghue uncovers are often rich enough to support entire novels, and yet she only spins out a few details. In many cases it seems like the real story is starting where she ends her writing, which can make this a frustrating read. Yes, it's interesting that a slave murdered his owner and went on the run with his owner's wi...more

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Sep 22, 2012 Vikki VanSickle rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult-fiction, canadian, short-fiction

I have loved Emma Donoghue since before Room. Her novel Slammerkin remains one of my favourite pieces of historical fiction. I very much enjoyed this collection of historical short stories. I read it in one day (admittedly much of this day was spent on a plane). I was lucky enough to hear the author speak about the book and where the stories came from. Emma described the freedom of zooming in on a single moment in history, rather than creating a whole novel around it. She described herself as a...more

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May 06, 2013 Jordan Gregory rated it 3 of 5 stars

Donoghue offers an intriguing premise here: a collection of short stories on social outcasts and rebels, inspired by actual people and events. Characters are scattered all over time and space: we have Puritans, slaves and their owners, cowboys, modern artists, Irish immigrants, and even an early transvestite. If you are interested in historical fiction, namely weird historical fiction, there's bound to be something here for you.

A handful of the stories are truly stunning. The Lost Seed and The...more

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Mar 09, 2013 Kathleen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013, anthology, historical-fiction

Usually, when I read a collection of stories, there are a few I love, a few I like, a few I could take or leave, and a few I dislike. In this collection, I love almost all of them, and there are only a few I only like, and none I dislike. That's almost impossible for me. But then, Emma Donoghue has always been a sure thing for me, ever since I read Kissing the Witch. This collection of stories about journeys and migrants lives up to its fairy tale predecessor.

Particular favorites include Man an...more

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Mar 10, 2013 Christine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013-reads

Not being a huge short story fan I started this book with a little bit of trepidation, especially after having loved “Room” so much. But, despite the format, I enjoyed this book very much. Each story is a vignette taken from history, a newspaper article, a well known legend or a footnote from another source and Ms. Donoghue brings the characters to life. Taking the reader on a trip through different time periods and across North America we get a little taste of everything; love, crime, despair,...more

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Apr 29, 2013 Gina rated it 5 of 5 stars

I read this right after it came out (on my lunch breaks at work) and I highly recommend it. I think Emma Donoghue is pretty amazing and this collection of short stories are well researched and interesting. Each story is based on a real historical occurrences and Donoghue ends each story with a note as to the historical background, including sources. The stories are organized into three sections: departures, in transit, and arrivals. Certainly the characters are all in different points on a journ...more

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Apr 08, 2013 Kate rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: canada, fiction, collections, history, united-states, glbt

Donoghue is now on my list of "authors who I'll pick up books by as soon as I see them". This book's another historic collection of short stories, and I'm probably biased because she is essentially doing what I've never had the ability to do, which is take an interesting historical find and make it into an interesting story without losing the heart of what made it worth a second look in the first place. Although I also like her modern-set books too. I think the way she writes relationships is a...more

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Nov 18, 2012 Meg - A Bookish Affair rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, fiction, historical-fiction

3.5 stars. I was really excited for this book! Donoghue's "Room" was one of my favorite reads last year so when I heard that Donoghue's Astray was coming out, I knew that I had to read this book. Now short stories are not usually my favorite but because of the writing in "Room," I gave this book a shot. I was definitely pleased and I know that in the future, Emma Donoghue will continue to be on my must read. Now to go back and read her backlist...

This book is all about journeys of all different...more

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Dec 24, 2012 Karen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction, short-stories, united-kingdom

Donoghue takes historical documents--letters, newspaper articles, court documents--and fleshes them out into short stories. I adore her ability to imagine a full story from sometimes the most scant details.

She is very good at adopting a variety of voices. In this collection (I've read an earlier one, The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits), Donoghue brings to life the mind, heart and soul of an elephant trainer, a very earnest prostitute, a pair of gold prospectors, a wild woman of the west, a wom...more

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Aug 19, 2012 Sarah Pi rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: first-reads, short-stories

I've never read Donoghue's longer fiction, but I love her stories. In this collection, as in The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits: Stories, she includes detailed story notes. Each piece jumps off from a news clipping or other factual source. It's great fun to try to figure out what the grain of truth is inside each work of fiction. Most of the stories are somewhat bittersweet; after all, who makes the news? A few are from the other type of news, surprising deceptions carried out on an individual...more

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Nov 03, 2012 Alena rated it 4 of 5 stars

When I read an author I admire, I often wonder what inspires their stories. Emma Donoghue provides the answers in this wonderful collection of historical fiction shorts about castaways, immigrants and lost souls. Each story contains an afterward referencing her inspiration -- sometimes a newspaper article, sometimes a moment in history or famous court cases.

I appreciated reading the fiction story first, falling enveloped into the tiny worlds Donoghue created in a few short pages, before I knew t...more

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May 06, 2013 Emrys rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Adults reluctant short story readers

Recommended to Emrys by: coworker

Shelves: adult

An expertly-written, well-varied selection of 14 short historical fictions, each tied to a real sourced anecdote from 1639-1968, from London to The Yukon. Though the motifs of leaving home and finding new beginnings are woven throughout, it is surprising and thought-provoking from first to last.

Each story is (blessedly) so different from the others, that it is impossible to review the book as a whole, though I could talk at length about each of the fourteen stories individually.I felt that each...more An expertly-written, well-varied selection of 14 short historical fictions, each tied to a real sourced anecdote from 1639-1968, from London to The Yukon. Though the motifs of leaving home and finding new beginnings are woven throughout, it is surprising and thought-provoking from first to last.

Each story is (blessedly) so different from the others, that it is impossible to review the book as a whole, though I could talk at length about each of the fourteen stories individually.I felt that each builds well-rounded, real characters, tells a comprehensive and captivating story from beginning to end, and each has it's own special theme and mood.

At many times I felt like I was reading my way through a curiosity shop or a museum of the bizarre. Each story felt so close and personable, that I felt an old friend was telling me a story they had heard a long while off, sparked back into memory by a photo, a bracelet, a statue, or a dusty army jacket in their father's attic.

I admit I've never been a rabid fan of historical fiction and I could have put it aside half-way through my first story if the collection had started with The Widow's Curse or The Lost Seed or The Body Swap. Man and Boy, however was the perfect start, and one of my favorite's to the end. I was tickled to a smile when I discovered who the "boy" really was. As an animal lover myself I loved the sweet bond between the two of them, sad though it was in their desperate dependence on one another. To then turn to the end and see it was all true gave me a bittersweet twang in my heart, that was a beautiful mood set-up for the rest of the collection.

I also felt that there was a particular motif of gender roles throughout. Besides the 6 characters I would consider GLBT, there are still others(like the boy in The Hunt, Mrs. Gomez, Mollie Monroe, Missus Brown, Cousin Eliza, Caroline Thompson)who struggle with and against the stigma, restraints and responsibilities put on their gender.

The only story i found to be unexceptional was The Body Swap. First of all, there is no body "swapping" going on so I felt the title was a misnomer. But more than that, I did not connect with the main character. I thought it was a bad choice to keep the readers in the dark about his true identity until practically the end. That would have been fine had it not been told from his perspective, but...it just left me confused, flipping back pages to see if I had missed something. It didn't even feel like a reveal, but rather a printing error where a character name had been swapped or a few pages had been left out. This, more than any of the other stories, is based on an event that is more "textbook history" than "historical anecdote". It didn't have that special feeling of seeing into a secret and personal past of an individual unknown person that the other stories had. Perhaps this particular story got Ms Donoghue more wrapped up in the facts than the others did.

I read this as an uncorrected proof and some elements are subject to have changed.
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Aug 30, 2012 Caitlin rated it 2 of 5 stars

These short stories present vignettes in the lives of outsiders and people who live on the border, whether that means the border of "polite society" as in the case of a young woman who supports her brother and daughter by working as a prostitute; the inter-species friendship between an elephant and its keeper; or the blurry boundaries between genders discovered when a woman in the 1920s discovers after his death that the father she loved was born a woman.

Because they're not connected in any way...more

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Oct 25, 2012 Kyle rated it 4 of 5 stars

Normally, I avoid short story collections; however, I had promised myself after reading "Room" that I would read everything that Emma Donoghue publishes. And I'm glad I did. This collection is not to be missed.

The book is broken into three parts: part 1 is stories about people that are about to embark on a journey, part 2 is stories about people that are in transit of a journey, and part 3 is stories about people that are concluding a journey. The stories are historical in that they are based in...more Normally, I avoid short story collections; however, I had promised myself after reading "Room" that I would read everything that Emma Donoghue publishes. And I'm glad I did. This collection is not to be missed.

The book is broken into three parts: part 1 is stories about people that are about to embark on a journey, part 2 is stories about people that are in transit of a journey, and part 3 is stories about people that are concluding a journey. The stories are historical in that they are based in historical fact and are told over a wide range of eras. The earliest story, about a zealous tattler who accuses everyone around him of homosexual acts only to learn that he himself is closeted, is set in 1639. The latest story is set in Toronto (New Market, specifically) in the 1960's.

The subject matter runs the gamut in this book. There is the story of a slave that tricks his master and runs away with his master's wife. There is a story set during the Yukon gold-rush which is actually a love story between two miners... reminded me of a colder "Brokeback Mountain". There is a rather disturbing tale set during the War of independence that reveals how the systematic rape of women was a key "strategy" that the British used to fight their war on the rebels. But I think two stories stood out the most for me. The first story int he collection is told from the perspective of the man that cared for Jumbo the elephant in Britain, before the animal was sold to Barnum. I liked this story because it makes the reader a character in the story, and the character you play is.... the elephant! The second story which really stood out for me was "Daddy's Girl" in which a young lady is mourning over the body of her dead father, the very famous democrat, Murray Hall, whom, posthumously, was revealed to be a woman.

Each story is followed-up with a quick postscript that explains the historical accuracy of the preceding story and provides further context to why the author chose to tell the story.

Ultimately, Emma Donoghue is a brilliant writer. Each story has a nugget of mystery at its core, and most of the stories are told from an unconventional perspective which draws the reader in.... again, I am thinking of the Jumbo the Elephant story. Her unique voice and style puts Emma Donoghue at the top of her writing class. The stories in this volume are so finely crafted, that readers may have difficulty putting the book down once it is opened. Highly recommended.(less)

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Nov 25, 2012 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars

My taste in literature does not usually include much historical fiction, but I have read Emma Donaghue's historical work anyway and I enjoy it (despite this thing I can't name or put my finger on that sort of just BUGS me about historical fiction. Is that strange?) In this collection, Donaghue takes historical artifacts and write short stories about the journeys they represent. They are good stories, with writing characteristic of Donaghue and encompassing the issues she tends to address. Some o...more

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Dec 09, 2012 Jodi rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012-audiobooks, audiobook, ll12

This group of short stories was interesting. At the end of each story Donoghue provides the snippet of historical information that informed the story. Unfortunately, although the audio was very well read, I found that those snippets didn't have enough of a pause, it took me a while to understand that I was listening almost to an authors note. All of these stories were historical and the theme was travel. Donoghue, who reads her afterword, explains in depth, but I can't say that I found most of t...more

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Jan 07, 2013 Raewyn rated it 4 of 5 stars

I knew it was a collection of short stories but the delicious treat was a short paragraph or two at the end of each one explaining the news clipping or element that prompted the piece. As the title of the work suggests, the characters we meet have gone astray, either geographically or otherwise. Sometimes in several ways.

There is a thoroughly engaging afterword giving the reader insight into Emma's thoughts and philosophies on journeys, emmigrations, and arrivals from the perspective of and by h...more

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Mar 14, 2013 Alexandrea rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-2013

These short stories had no overlapping characters or places, but the "theme" of each story has a very similar idea behind it. These are all stories of people trying to move on from something, be it a place they no longer belong or a lifestyle they wish to forget. After each of these stories there was a little blurb of the history they were based on, some of them were only based on a single sentence or idea and some were based much more in fact. I had a couple favorite stories..."Man and Boy" the...more

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Mar 07, 2013 Katie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-stories, glbt

I have to say that I really hated Room, but after making a book discussion guide for it, I had a feeling that I would really enjoy some of Emma Donughue's other work, and I was right.

Astray appealed to my archivist tendencies. She sourced each story from a little snippet of history - a letter, a newspaper clipping, or the mention of a historical figure in a book. While many of the characters were real people, little about them was known. It was completely obvious to me that she delighted in the...more

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Feb 08, 2013 Penny McGill rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: book-club-favourites

I'm not usually a big fan of short story collections. I read them if someone suggests it or if they are chosen for one of my book clubs but I like a story to give me a good sense that something has happened and ended well. With some short stories I have felt like there are elements of the story that have been left out or that the author has more to tell but can't - so I avoid them. I liked Emma Donoghue's "Room" so much that I put this one on hold as soon as I heard about it and then finished it...more

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Feb 21, 2013 Chad rated it 4 of 5 stars

Historical fiction for those not sure if they like historical fiction. This was a great find. I'll admit that I wasn't really considering this book when I saw it at the library, but it was so short I thought I should give it a try. It is a bunch of short stories that are written mostly in the17th - 19th centuries all based on some scrap of newspaper article, letters or journal entries. The unifying theme is supposed to be travel though not every story fits this unless you want to get metaphysica...more

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About Emma Donoghue

Emma is the youngest of eight children of Frances and Denis Donoghue. She attended Catholic convent schools in Dublin, apart from one year in New York at the age of ten. In 1990 she earned a first-class honours BA in English and French from University College Dublin, and in 1997 a PhD (on the concept of friendship between men and women in eighteenth-century English fiction) from the University of...more

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Quotes from Astray

“Writing stories is my way of scratching that itch: my escape from the claustrophobia of individuality. It lets me, at least for a while, live more than one life, walk more than one path. Reading, of course, can do the same.” — 7 people liked it

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