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12th out of 31 books
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21 voters
Shiloh and Other Stories
"These stories will last," said Raymond Carver of Shiloh and Other Stories when it was first published, and almost two decades later this stunning fiction debut and winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award has become a modern American classic. In Shiloh, Bobbie Ann Mason introduces us to her western Kentucky people and the lives they forge for themselves amid the ups and downs of...more
Paperback, 256 pages
Published
August 7th 2001
by Modern Library
(first published September 28th 1983)
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My personal favorite story in this collection is "Offerings," which originally appeared in The New Yorker in the 1980s. "Offerings" is not "flash" but it is very small for a traditional short story length, I am guessing maybe under 3000 words. I can't get over the story's magic, I keep re-readin
g it to comprehend its hypnotic complexity and simplicity (both) its honesty and intuitive sense of how the world leaves us so connected and so alone. The others in this award winning collection (the coll...more
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"Bobbie Ann Mason is an unusually attractive younger writer whose works have appeared in The New Yorker..." Isn't it strange that the above is the first sentence of the inside book jacket cover for this book? The book won many awards. Do any of Philip Roth's book jackets include statements like "Philip Roth is really handsome"? Strange.
The stories are terrific. I just don't see how writers master the short story and then go on to write multiple great short stories. Bobbie Ann Mason creates funny...more
The stories are terrific. I just don't see how writers master the short story and then go on to write multiple great short stories. Bobbie Ann Mason creates funny...more
Normally I don’t pick up a volume of stories to read, but the fact that this is a well known Kentucky author, and I had read some of her other novels, I was compelled to see what was inside. I’m glad I read this book. The stories all have similar themes, and if you read it all at once like I did, the characters and plots can get a little confusing and start to run together. The author writes perfectly using the dialect and slang of country people in Kentucky. All the stories take place in wester...more
This quiet, meditative collection is set in western Kentucky, in the homes of ordinary, working-class people (I liked to believe each story was about a different neighbor).
This is not the book for you if you enjoy a dense plot. Be forewarned: nothing really happens. A couple hundred pages later and I can recall a tree being cut down, dinners being made, cats being fed…like most fiction I enjoy or movies I prefer, what I take with me is the feeling, the loneliness, the futility. This book was a...more
This is not the book for you if you enjoy a dense plot. Be forewarned: nothing really happens. A couple hundred pages later and I can recall a tree being cut down, dinners being made, cats being fed…like most fiction I enjoy or movies I prefer, what I take with me is the feeling, the loneliness, the futility. This book was a...more
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these stories glowed with a late 70s early 80s midwestern sensibility that only a true native could capture. i loved this book because it reminded me of my childhood. most importantly, mason's words describe the transition between an agrarian/rural society and the "coming of age" modernity that the midwest has and IS STILL experiencing. we all have a cousin or a relative that still looks and sounds like some of her characters. i still wince at mason's observation of where i come from--and to som...more
Wonderful collection of short stories set in western Kentucky during the late seventies and early eighties. Story topics deal with family relationships, and many touch upon the changes feminism brought to households and, particularly, husband-wife relationships. Most of the characters are working-class who deal with problems faced by people of all economic groups.
I especially like the title story, "Shiloh," which tackles the changes that occur when a male breadwinner becomes jobless and his wif...more
I especially like the title story, "Shiloh," which tackles the changes that occur when a male breadwinner becomes jobless and his wif...more
I would give this book 3 1/2, but that's not an option. It was a unique book in the way it made you look at life. I was able to see a lifestyle that was not my own in a very clear and human way. Very interesting. I am glad Lori let me read it.
I'm not a fan of Mason's writing style, nor am I a fan of her choices in subject matter. Her characters felt dull and lifeless, and her writing made it feel as if I was watching a puppet being strung from one paragraph to another.
A bit like rays of light pulsed dot-dash-dot from the warmest center of Lorrie Moore's Self-Help received and bent through a prism made of the fragile glass dreams of Raymond Carver's down-and-out husbands, sad-and-fierce wives.
I'm a huge fan of short stories. I'm actually somewhat obsessed with the idea that an author can be so economical with words, yet often create a lasting impression/feeling that lingers. Bobbie Ann Mason, with her strong Southern influence, has some stories that can do this. Most of her work is downright depressing, yet the characters stay with you. Most of the stories don't resolve neatly, if at all. I like this for the feeling it gives of being present for a quick moment in the lives of others....more
I renewed it twice and finally just took it back without reading all of the stories within. I'm reading too many books at once! Anyway, I had long heard of Bobbie Ann Mason and her Kentucky stories. Her western Kentucky is not too unlike my northeast, Arkansas, basically just across the River from each other. I will return to her when I'm in the mood for some stories of the rural upland South.
I read In Country many years ago and enjoyed it, but for whatever reason I never read any more Mason until now.
She's a solid writer. She's really great at creating a sense of place--she's definitely a southern writer. Most of her characters work at places like K-Mart and the Piggly Wiggly, and many frown upon cursing and drinking. And few are happy--but then, what characters in short stories are happy? Who wants to read stories about those people?
Reading the stories was like reading a novel; th...more
She's a solid writer. She's really great at creating a sense of place--she's definitely a southern writer. Most of her characters work at places like K-Mart and the Piggly Wiggly, and many frown upon cursing and drinking. And few are happy--but then, what characters in short stories are happy? Who wants to read stories about those people?
Reading the stories was like reading a novel; th...more
Did Norma Jean jump off the bluff at the end?! Given the personality of the character, I doubt so.
Aug 10, 2012
David
added it
I am enjoying it with the comfortable richness of a visit home after a long absence.
I only read Shiloh and I really liked it. 12grade
Read the story Shiloh
If I remember correctly she would occasionally read essays over NPR in the 80's. Being a kid inclined to thrill at these seamless insertions of dream (fiction) into lengthy news reports, I was pleased. I managed to come across this slim collection in some or another continental US bookshop (used) and to purchase it.
It's ok this way of reading (as contrasted with listening)her stories. But not nearly as pleasing as the radio.
It's ok this way of reading (as contrasted with listening)her stories. But not nearly as pleasing as the radio.
I enjoyed the writing in this collection, but it was, as one friend from book club put it, "a very quiet book where nothing really happens." The beauty and poignancy of life is shown in the details in these stories, but for me it just wasn't an enthralling journey. Beautiful writing, though.
A couple of good stories and a few more mediocre ones here. Well structured and appropriately "literary," but not enough toeing of the emotional border between drama and melodrama. They play it safe by avoiding most forms of emotion, which leave some of them feeling dry and uninvolved. Highlights for me were "Shiloh," "Third Monday," and "Lying Doggo."
Bobbie Ann Mason is one of my favorite short story writers. She's a Kentucky native, I believe, and her characters typically are working-class and Southern. I read "Shiloh" in high school and fell in love with Mason's style and her memorable characters. I rarely buy books (use your local library, folks!), but this is a collection I would love to own.
The title story is as good as advertised, but after that I found this collection relentlessly one-note. Almost every story features a vaguely disillusioned heroine, a poorly-developed husband who's not on the scene, and a rural setting sketched with the same tired references to daytime television and hamburger noodle casseroles. It bored me.
This is a collection of short stories that I am re-reading.
I am also reading the latest compilation of KAKALAK-an anthology of Carolina Poets, a journal I have contributed to in the past and would like to submit to again. Along the saim lines, I am reading the latest Main Street Rag.
I am also reading the latest compilation of KAKALAK-an anthology of Carolina Poets, a journal I have contributed to in the past and would like to submit to again. Along the saim lines, I am reading the latest Main Street Rag.
For me, Bobbie Ann Mason is either very, very hit or sadly miss (sadly as in her stories occasionally depress me completely, and it makes me not want to read them). This book was like that-mostly wonderful and poignant with some sad and hopeless moments dispersed throughout.
I only read the short story Shiloh.
I couldn't really see the point or the purpose of the story... :-/
I couldn't really see the point or the purpose of the story... :-/
Oct 02, 2007
Audra Wolfe
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
farm girls in exile
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Like Clear Springs, Mason's family memoir, this collection of short stories is set in Western Kentucky. It's one of my all-time favorites and is wonderfully evocative of a certain time (mostly the late 1970s/early 1980s) and place.
Some folks complain that this first collection is simply too much of the same note. But that's just envy. She perfectly captures a time and a place and the people who live there. The title story IS perfect.
Bobbie Ann Mason makes me feel like I've intruded-in the best kind of way- on her character's lives. She gets the nuances, gets the story gets at a rural mindset in remarkable ways.
I'm rereading this to make sure I still love it. I count "Shiloh" and "A New-Wave Format" as outstanding stories. I want to make sure that I still can give this book 5 stars.
I'm re-reading this fantastic collection.
'Shiloh' is quite possibly one of the most perfect short stories I've read.
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Bobbie Ann Mason has won the PEN/Hemingway Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the American Book Award, and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Her books include In Country and Feather Crowns. She lives in Kentucky.
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“One day I was counting the cats and I absent-mindedly counted myself.”
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6 people liked it
“Mary Lou suddenly realizes that Mack calls the temperature number because he is afraid to talk on the telephone, and by listening to a recording, he doesn’t have to reply. It’s his way of pretending that he’s involved. He wants it to snow so he won’t have to go outside. He is afraid of what might happen. But it occurs to her that what he must really be afraid of is women. Then Mary Lou feels so sick and heavy with her power over him that she wants to cry. She sees the way her husband is standing there in a frozen pose. Mack looks as though he could stand there all night with the telephone receiver against his ear.”
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2 people liked it
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