Musings on Ancestors and Others, by Fred Chappell
href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7..." style="float: left; padding-right: 20px">
Ancestors and Others: New and Selected Stories by Fred Chappell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
In the interest of full disclosure, Fred Chappell was one of my professors when I was a student in the MFA Creative Writing Program at UNC Greensboro. He chaired my thesis committee and was my mentor.
Musings:
As I was reading the stories in this collection, I could hear Fred's voice: Southern, Appalachian, western North Carolina, and echoes of my own North Carolina accents. I heard the voice of a storyteller in stories that range from fables and parables, to the mythic, and stories of family, of love and loss and grief. I found these stories existing in the borderlands between the deeply intellectual and the fantastic, the sad and the funny, the magical and the mundane. "A boy discovers a secret buried n a locked room ... The botanist Carl Linneaus finds hidden worlds within the plants he so carefully cultivates and classifies ... a sheriff arrives to find a dream blocking Highway 51 ..." (front jacket).
I found myself wandering in the sometimes dark, sometimes light, often satiric, and cerebral garden of this writer's mind, a writer is good-hearted and good-humored.
Recommended.
View all my reviews
Ancestors and Others: New and Selected Stories by Fred ChappellMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
In the interest of full disclosure, Fred Chappell was one of my professors when I was a student in the MFA Creative Writing Program at UNC Greensboro. He chaired my thesis committee and was my mentor.
Musings:
As I was reading the stories in this collection, I could hear Fred's voice: Southern, Appalachian, western North Carolina, and echoes of my own North Carolina accents. I heard the voice of a storyteller in stories that range from fables and parables, to the mythic, and stories of family, of love and loss and grief. I found these stories existing in the borderlands between the deeply intellectual and the fantastic, the sad and the funny, the magical and the mundane. "A boy discovers a secret buried n a locked room ... The botanist Carl Linneaus finds hidden worlds within the plants he so carefully cultivates and classifies ... a sheriff arrives to find a dream blocking Highway 51 ..." (front jacket).
I found myself wandering in the sometimes dark, sometimes light, often satiric, and cerebral garden of this writer's mind, a writer is good-hearted and good-humored.
Recommended.
View all my reviews
No comments have been added yet.
