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The News from Spain: Seven Variations on a Love Story
A San Francisco Chronicle and NPR Best Book of the Year
The author of the acclaimed memoir The Suicide Index returns with a virtuosic collection of stories, each a stirring parable of the power of love and the impossibility of understanding it. Spanning centuries and continents, from eighteenth-century Vienna to contemporary America, Joan Wickersham shows, with uncanny exactitude, how we never really know what's in someone else's heart--or in our own.
Review :
Best Books of 2012, NPR, San Francisco Chronicle, Kirkus Reviews
Wise and courageous and often brilliant...breaks new ground in our perceptions of what a short story can be. Wonderfully imaginative and original. - Boston Globe
An ode to heartbreak and regret...Wickersham's gift is for capturing the habits of mind that lead even smart people to deceive themselves...her book makes you slow down and listen, and then watch for people to reveal themselves. - New York Times Book Review
Elegantly structured, emotionally compelling...Short stories don't get much better than this. - Kirkus Reviews
Do not mistake Wickersham's exquisitely polished prose for good manners. Although she writes with a vintage grace...she is brutal and funny too...Divine. - San Francisco Chronicle
Virtuosic...Wickersham [takes an] emotional cannonball into every single one of her characters. The doubts and tenderness they share are ones that only the finest fiction can create. - Oprah.com Book of the Week
Wickersham makes a triumphant return to fiction...articulates subtleties of human behavior that ordinarily elude language altogether. - Elle
Munro's and Wickersham's books are at the top of this year's pile. - Chicago Tribune
So moving it will close your throat. - LA Times
The prose is beautiful, and you feel those characters like real people. - Cheryl Strayed
A master of the written word and storytelling in all its forms. - BookPage
Joan Wickersham has done it astonished, enchanted, and moved me. - Julia Glass
Gorgeous, completely original...As soon as I finished it, I began to read it again. - Andre Gregory
As skilled as Alice Munro in maneuvering her characters, and the reader, through time...Highly recommended. - Library Journal
The author of the acclaimed memoir The Suicide Index returns with a virtuosic collection of stories, each a stirring parable of the power of love and the impossibility of understanding it. Spanning centuries and continents, from eighteenth-century Vienna to contemporary America, Joan Wickersham shows, with uncanny exactitude, how we never really know what's in someone else's heart--or in our own.
Review :
Best Books of 2012, NPR, San Francisco Chronicle, Kirkus Reviews
Wise and courageous and often brilliant...breaks new ground in our perceptions of what a short story can be. Wonderfully imaginative and original. - Boston Globe
An ode to heartbreak and regret...Wickersham's gift is for capturing the habits of mind that lead even smart people to deceive themselves...her book makes you slow down and listen, and then watch for people to reveal themselves. - New York Times Book Review
Elegantly structured, emotionally compelling...Short stories don't get much better than this. - Kirkus Reviews
Do not mistake Wickersham's exquisitely polished prose for good manners. Although she writes with a vintage grace...she is brutal and funny too...Divine. - San Francisco Chronicle
Virtuosic...Wickersham [takes an] emotional cannonball into every single one of her characters. The doubts and tenderness they share are ones that only the finest fiction can create. - Oprah.com Book of the Week
Wickersham makes a triumphant return to fiction...articulates subtleties of human behavior that ordinarily elude language altogether. - Elle
Munro's and Wickersham's books are at the top of this year's pile. - Chicago Tribune
So moving it will close your throat. - LA Times
The prose is beautiful, and you feel those characters like real people. - Cheryl Strayed
A master of the written word and storytelling in all its forms. - BookPage
Joan Wickersham has done it astonished, enchanted, and moved me. - Julia Glass
Gorgeous, completely original...As soon as I finished it, I began to read it again. - Andre Gregory
As skilled as Alice Munro in maneuvering her characters, and the reader, through time...Highly recommended. - Library Journal
224 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2012
100 people are currently reading
4353 people want to read
About the author
Joan Wickersham
16 books54 followersJoan Wickersham was born in New York City. She is the author of two previous books, most recently The Suicide Index, a National Book Award finalist. Her fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. Her op-ed column appears regularly in The Boston Globe; she has published essays and reviews in the Los Angeles Times and the International Herald Tribune; and she has contributed on-air essays to National Public Radio. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and two sons.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 259 reviews
November 17, 2012
What’s the news? What’s the news from Spain, from New York, from Mexico, from the heartland? From the land of the heart? The News from Spain by Joan Wickersham is a book of seven short stories which, while they are not connected by characters or location, they are connected by the heart line. In one story Wickersham investigates the relationship of a paralyzed dancer and her choreographer husband. Of the dancer’s relationship to one of her caregivers, a gay man, and his relationship to his lover. In this one story the reader sees several forms of love and how people handle their various relationships. All seven of these stories can stand alone but each of them informs the reader’s understanding of the other stories. Each of these stories is both a marvelous invention and wonderfully real. Wickersham shows the reader various and sundry lovers doing things, thinking thinks, imagining things that makes the reader go, “Oh, yes! That’s happened to . . . .” She makes the reader consider again the age-old question, “How well do we ever know anyone?” And consider the question, what do we want from love?
The news from Spain? The news is “A love story—your own or anyone else’s—is interior, hidden. It can never be accurately reported, only imagined.” Wickersham has imagined stories that sound like eye witness reportage from the front lines where “It’s still the same old story; A fight for love and glory.” It may be the “same old story,” but it’s freshly told by Wickersham. The News from Spain is a book for lovers of the short story or lovers of the story of love.
(my review for the Marquette University library's Ex Libris)
The news from Spain? The news is “A love story—your own or anyone else’s—is interior, hidden. It can never be accurately reported, only imagined.” Wickersham has imagined stories that sound like eye witness reportage from the front lines where “It’s still the same old story; A fight for love and glory.” It may be the “same old story,” but it’s freshly told by Wickersham. The News from Spain is a book for lovers of the short story or lovers of the story of love.
(my review for the Marquette University library's Ex Libris)
November 13, 2012
The seven short stories in this book were all titled "The News from Spain". They were all completely different and unrelated, although they were all about a relationship(s) involving some type of love. It was smartly written in that the "news from Spain" was interwoven in to each of the separate stories AND because it showed various forms and degrees of love. However, it may have been TOO smartly written for me because I just didn't get it overall. Most all of the stories were about somebody having an affair, or being treated unfairly or just some other miserable situation in which strong feelings and emotions were involved. Give me sweet and traditional love and sacrifice any day over pining, unrequited and/or selfish and/or pitiful forms of love. I mean, all of the stories were depressing, and people having sex or wanting to have sex with other people that they weren't committed to. Looks like I'm in the minority here, but I don't know...maybe I'm missing something?
March 6, 2013
Well. This was recommended to me by someone whose taste in reading I admire. I am giving it three stars because now that I have written a book I would NEVER give anyone less than three stars who wrote one themselves, unless it was Hitler, or Stalin, or Pinochet, because writing a book is a big deal and all any author needs is someone to come along and let them know how their book DISPLEASED them. This book is elegant, thoughtful, smart, well-crafted. I hated it. But she wrote it, and she wrote it well, and that deserves something. In fact, it deserves a lot.
March 24, 2015
Let me cut right to the chase. This is one of the most confidently-written, tender, and triumphant short story collections I have read since Alice Munro. And that is saying a whole lot.
Most short story collections are linked by a theme, character, or plot point, and so it is here. In each of these stories, a character receives “news from Spain” – real news or metaphorical news. In the first story, old friends receive their news on the beach: “…my father would hand me a shell and say, “Want to listen to the news from Spain?” In another later story, the widow of a charismatic race car driver learns that her young husband has died while she is in Madrid, waiting to join him. And so on.
Some of the characters in these stories are meticulously-crafted figments of the author’s imagination. Others are based on real people: the real marriage of George Balanchine and his paralyzed ballerina wife, Tanaquil Le Clercq, for example, or a fact-combined-with fiction story of a triangle love affair consisting of Eleanor Roosevelt, Martha Gellhorn and David Gurewitsch. That story begins with this line: “Some of this is fiction, and some isn’t.”
There are breathtakingly good stories in this collection, each of which is entitled The News From Spain. Perhaps my favorite is the one focused on the race car driver’s widow, who is being interviewed by a young journalist and his younger wife. Eventually, it is the person on the sidelines – Lisa, the young wife who is along for the ride – who will reveal the greatest secret. Another favorite is the paralyzed ballerina story; she is cared for by a tentative gay man who is pining for a member of her husband’s company. The parallelism of the two stories – both Tanaquil and her caregiver, Malcolm, fear being deserted – is beautifully accomplished.
In another favorite, a middle-aged daughter balances relationships with her dying mother (who was “always the one who wanted to talk about the news from Spain, or from the Vatican, or from some uncertain city where everything had collapsed…”) and a compelling new man in her life. In a few short sentences, Ms. Wickersham nails the relationship: “You’re so sad,” he keeps saying It starts as sympathy. A week or two later it’s cool, a diagnosis. Then it becomes a criticism.”
All seven of these narratives are, in the end, love stories. “A love story – your own or anyone else’s – is interior, hidden. It can never be accurately reported, only imagined,” Ms. Wickersham writes. “It is all dreams and inventions. It’s guesswork.” It will end well or it will end badly. It will be witnessed be significant others who will view it from different angles. It will cause searing heartache or exhilarating joy. And, it will echo through the seas of time, like the news in Spain that comes through a seashell.
With astonishing psychological insights and deep compassion for her characters, Ms. Wickersham has written a lovely book reflecting human complexity. I can’t wait to see what this writer does next.
Most short story collections are linked by a theme, character, or plot point, and so it is here. In each of these stories, a character receives “news from Spain” – real news or metaphorical news. In the first story, old friends receive their news on the beach: “…my father would hand me a shell and say, “Want to listen to the news from Spain?” In another later story, the widow of a charismatic race car driver learns that her young husband has died while she is in Madrid, waiting to join him. And so on.
Some of the characters in these stories are meticulously-crafted figments of the author’s imagination. Others are based on real people: the real marriage of George Balanchine and his paralyzed ballerina wife, Tanaquil Le Clercq, for example, or a fact-combined-with fiction story of a triangle love affair consisting of Eleanor Roosevelt, Martha Gellhorn and David Gurewitsch. That story begins with this line: “Some of this is fiction, and some isn’t.”
There are breathtakingly good stories in this collection, each of which is entitled The News From Spain. Perhaps my favorite is the one focused on the race car driver’s widow, who is being interviewed by a young journalist and his younger wife. Eventually, it is the person on the sidelines – Lisa, the young wife who is along for the ride – who will reveal the greatest secret. Another favorite is the paralyzed ballerina story; she is cared for by a tentative gay man who is pining for a member of her husband’s company. The parallelism of the two stories – both Tanaquil and her caregiver, Malcolm, fear being deserted – is beautifully accomplished.
In another favorite, a middle-aged daughter balances relationships with her dying mother (who was “always the one who wanted to talk about the news from Spain, or from the Vatican, or from some uncertain city where everything had collapsed…”) and a compelling new man in her life. In a few short sentences, Ms. Wickersham nails the relationship: “You’re so sad,” he keeps saying It starts as sympathy. A week or two later it’s cool, a diagnosis. Then it becomes a criticism.”
All seven of these narratives are, in the end, love stories. “A love story – your own or anyone else’s – is interior, hidden. It can never be accurately reported, only imagined,” Ms. Wickersham writes. “It is all dreams and inventions. It’s guesswork.” It will end well or it will end badly. It will be witnessed be significant others who will view it from different angles. It will cause searing heartache or exhilarating joy. And, it will echo through the seas of time, like the news in Spain that comes through a seashell.
With astonishing psychological insights and deep compassion for her characters, Ms. Wickersham has written a lovely book reflecting human complexity. I can’t wait to see what this writer does next.
January 16, 2020
"You meet someone, you fall in love, you marry. You meet someone, you fall in love, it turns into a disaster. You meet someone, you fall in love, but one of you is married, or both are: you have or don't have an affair. You meet someone, you fall in love, but you are never quite sure if your feelings are returned. You meet someone, you fall in love, but you are able to keep your feelings mostly hidden: occasionally they cough, or break a dinner plate, or burn down the kitchen (accidentally? On purpose?), but mostly they stay out of sight when other people are around."
Love. What a heavy, misunderstood, overused, often ephemeral word. But also what a wonderful, life-changing, everlasting word when it is real! In The News from Spain: Seven Variations on a Love Story , Wickersham brings us stories of love in all its messy reality. It's sometimes depressing, it often requires forgiveness or understanding, and it rarely resembles a classic romance novel.
Story I introduces us to Susan and John. They're on their first vacation together since John had a one-occurrence affair. They're petrified that they will no longer be able to avoid being in the same room alone together, and will have to confront their feelings. Susan muses "She was tired of being angry at John, that it was fading a little but that she didn't think it would ever stop. That she wondered if it would always go on this way or would eventually change: this paradox that any moment of happiness between them became a new, incendiary part of the grievance."
Story II explores the love between a mother (Harriet) and daughter. It also explores the daughter Rebecca's contrasting love affairs. One is quiet, understated, and unassuming. Rebecca rebels though against the "pleasant" relationship. "Here was something she suddenly saw and deplored in herself, something she seemed to have in common with Harriet: a raw belief that love had to be declared and proved, baldly, loudly, explicitly." She eases out of that relationship, and starts a torrid love affair with a regular customer to her bookstore. She realizes the grass might have seemed greener when it wasn't really. "That's an aberration, not a revelation, she thinks. Being objectified, when she just wants to be accompanied." And then "'You're so sad,' he keeps saying. It starts as sympathy. A week or two later it's cool, a diagnosis. Then it becomes a criticism."
Story III involves two girls at an otherwise all boys boarding school. It's told in second person, and we readers are one of the two girls who has just fallen in love for the first time. "He's so clean. I like how his eyes are blue and his eyelashes are dark. I even like how his glasses are held together on one side with tape. He's a very serious, not very good guitarist. You didn't like him because of those things; it was more that you liked those things because you liked him."
Story IV is quite possibly based on real life. It tells of a paralyzed ballerina, and her philandering choreographer husband. Our protagonist pretends a worldly, nonchalant view towards her husband's love interest whom she calls "the infant", but the truth is more complex. "'Oh well.' It's an artifice, a performance, whether said of love or illness, before an audience or just to oneself. No one really thinks 'Oh, well,' but repeated often enough, rehearsed, it can become admirable, almost believable." She has numerous caretakers who provide 24 hour care, but her favorite is Malcolm. Wickersham does an excellent job portraying compassionate, non-sexual love through their relationship. Malcolm himself pines after a dancer named Tim. "I wish he were smarter. I wish he loved me more. Those things are true, but they don't matter. You don't want to go to someone because of a list--tall, red-gold hair, a kind of careless princely ease in the world--and there is no list that can stop you from wanting to go."
Story V begins with Charlie driving to conduct an interview with the wife of a deceased race car driver named Alice. His wife Lisa and their baby daughter are along for the ride. During the interview Alice pulls out a photo album. "The next photograph had been taken a moment later: they'd stopped laughing and were leaning toward each other, looking at each other. The look right before you kiss the one person whose existence strikes you as both necessary and miraculous."
Story VI is (as other readers have mentioned) a bit harder to follow. The narration alternates between the earlier lives of Rosina and Elvira who have become best friends in the golden post-middle age years. "Something bigger happened too, an alliance, an unspoken agreement that this would be a patient and safe friendship. They would come to know each other slowly, over time."
Finally, story VII is also anchored in a real life love triangle rumored to include Eleanor Roosevelt. A few of the quotes from this short story will stay with me for a long time. "She knows doctors, her husband's many doctors--some whose pessimism is like a fortress, without a door or even a window, so that she, though not usually prone to hysteria, has felt like a madwoman running up and down beside the thick stone walls looking for a way out or a way in, a way to get somewhere other than where she is."
Bottom line: Wickersham has written an exquisite book filled with excellent prose, interesting dialogue, and sharp observations. In the end, "A love story--your own or anyone else's--is interior, hidden. It can never be accurately reported, only imagined. It is all dreams and invention. It's guesswork." But what beautiful guesswork Wickersham has given us. Rated 4.5 stars or "outstanding". Highly recommended!!
"She's been a writer for twenty years, she knows her own voice--but this is a voice she is hearing for the first time. She has never been able to quite believe in anything until she has seen it for herself and found the language to describe it. Poverty and starvation in America, war in Spain. And now, out of nowhere, love. It shocks her and dazzles her, this new voice; she gazes at it and topples over into the pool of it and drowns."
Love. What a heavy, misunderstood, overused, often ephemeral word. But also what a wonderful, life-changing, everlasting word when it is real! In The News from Spain: Seven Variations on a Love Story , Wickersham brings us stories of love in all its messy reality. It's sometimes depressing, it often requires forgiveness or understanding, and it rarely resembles a classic romance novel.
Story I introduces us to Susan and John. They're on their first vacation together since John had a one-occurrence affair. They're petrified that they will no longer be able to avoid being in the same room alone together, and will have to confront their feelings. Susan muses "She was tired of being angry at John, that it was fading a little but that she didn't think it would ever stop. That she wondered if it would always go on this way or would eventually change: this paradox that any moment of happiness between them became a new, incendiary part of the grievance."
Story II explores the love between a mother (Harriet) and daughter. It also explores the daughter Rebecca's contrasting love affairs. One is quiet, understated, and unassuming. Rebecca rebels though against the "pleasant" relationship. "Here was something she suddenly saw and deplored in herself, something she seemed to have in common with Harriet: a raw belief that love had to be declared and proved, baldly, loudly, explicitly." She eases out of that relationship, and starts a torrid love affair with a regular customer to her bookstore. She realizes the grass might have seemed greener when it wasn't really. "That's an aberration, not a revelation, she thinks. Being objectified, when she just wants to be accompanied." And then "'You're so sad,' he keeps saying. It starts as sympathy. A week or two later it's cool, a diagnosis. Then it becomes a criticism."
Story III involves two girls at an otherwise all boys boarding school. It's told in second person, and we readers are one of the two girls who has just fallen in love for the first time. "He's so clean. I like how his eyes are blue and his eyelashes are dark. I even like how his glasses are held together on one side with tape. He's a very serious, not very good guitarist. You didn't like him because of those things; it was more that you liked those things because you liked him."
Story IV is quite possibly based on real life. It tells of a paralyzed ballerina, and her philandering choreographer husband. Our protagonist pretends a worldly, nonchalant view towards her husband's love interest whom she calls "the infant", but the truth is more complex. "'Oh well.' It's an artifice, a performance, whether said of love or illness, before an audience or just to oneself. No one really thinks 'Oh, well,' but repeated often enough, rehearsed, it can become admirable, almost believable." She has numerous caretakers who provide 24 hour care, but her favorite is Malcolm. Wickersham does an excellent job portraying compassionate, non-sexual love through their relationship. Malcolm himself pines after a dancer named Tim. "I wish he were smarter. I wish he loved me more. Those things are true, but they don't matter. You don't want to go to someone because of a list--tall, red-gold hair, a kind of careless princely ease in the world--and there is no list that can stop you from wanting to go."
Story V begins with Charlie driving to conduct an interview with the wife of a deceased race car driver named Alice. His wife Lisa and their baby daughter are along for the ride. During the interview Alice pulls out a photo album. "The next photograph had been taken a moment later: they'd stopped laughing and were leaning toward each other, looking at each other. The look right before you kiss the one person whose existence strikes you as both necessary and miraculous."
Story VI is (as other readers have mentioned) a bit harder to follow. The narration alternates between the earlier lives of Rosina and Elvira who have become best friends in the golden post-middle age years. "Something bigger happened too, an alliance, an unspoken agreement that this would be a patient and safe friendship. They would come to know each other slowly, over time."
Finally, story VII is also anchored in a real life love triangle rumored to include Eleanor Roosevelt. A few of the quotes from this short story will stay with me for a long time. "She knows doctors, her husband's many doctors--some whose pessimism is like a fortress, without a door or even a window, so that she, though not usually prone to hysteria, has felt like a madwoman running up and down beside the thick stone walls looking for a way out or a way in, a way to get somewhere other than where she is."
Bottom line: Wickersham has written an exquisite book filled with excellent prose, interesting dialogue, and sharp observations. In the end, "A love story--your own or anyone else's--is interior, hidden. It can never be accurately reported, only imagined. It is all dreams and invention. It's guesswork." But what beautiful guesswork Wickersham has given us. Rated 4.5 stars or "outstanding". Highly recommended!!
"She's been a writer for twenty years, she knows her own voice--but this is a voice she is hearing for the first time. She has never been able to quite believe in anything until she has seen it for herself and found the language to describe it. Poverty and starvation in America, war in Spain. And now, out of nowhere, love. It shocks her and dazzles her, this new voice; she gazes at it and topples over into the pool of it and drowns."
December 24, 2012
I loved this book. Not only is it great to read by yourself, it is a wonderful book to read aloud. On a three hour automobile trip, the passage went very fast as I read this book to my husband and we both ate it up. It was a delight to both of us.
The stories all have two links. They are all entitled 'News From Spain' and consist of either very serious news occurring during the story or very funny news: think Saturday Night Live appearing in the story. They are also linked by love. Every story is a love story, either happy or sad, but a love story nonetheless.
My favorite story was the last one, about unnamed people. The man is either 'A' or 'a doctor' and the woman is either a 'well-known journalist' or 'the most famous woman in the world'. I could not help but think of Eleanor Roosevelt as the story went back and forth in time from contemporary events to the 1940's and 50's and the relationship 'the famous woman' had with her doctor and his wife.
There are stories of older women yearning for younger men, older women yearning for men their age, young women first finding the feelings of romance and lust, dependent love and independent love.
The first story is about a couple in their mid-forties and upper middle-class. The story is sensitively told of how they go through a rough period in their 26-year marriage. They go to an engagement party for people they've known more than half their lives. This party is an occasion for some poignant recollections. It is very well-crafted and there is not a word out of place.
In the second story, Rebecca and her mother, Harriet, have a very unusual relationship - at times very individuated and at other times quite enmeshed. Rebecca and Harriet are very different from one another. Rebecca owns a small bookstore and Harriet is in an assisted living home and enjoys listening to television shows about catastrophes around the world. The story juxtaposes their lives, together and separately, exploring their love for each other and the other loves in their lives.
The third story is about two teen-aged girls, the only girls in a boys' boarding school. One of them develops a close relationship with their female Spanish teacher who has them both over to her home on Saturdays. The Spanish teacher calls her favorite 'Marisol' though that is not her given name. Secrets come out about the Spanish teacher, Mrs. Sturm, which lead to disaster. Years later when married and in her forties, 'Marisol' goes to Spain and thinks about Mrs. Sturm.
In another story, Liza and Charlie, a young couple, travel to interview Alice about her marriage forty years ago to a race car driver who died in Spain from a disastrous car crash. Alice was elsewhere when she got the news of her husband's death.
The last story is about a two love affairs, one occurring in the present and the other in the past. Some of this story is supposedly true and some of it is false. The Spanish news comes from Saturday night live: "The news from Spain this week is that Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead." No names of the lovers are ever given. The men are described as 'A' or 'the doctor' and the women are 'the journalist' or 'the famous woman'. One contemporary affair is unrequited. This story is reminiscent of Eleanor Roosevelt in the 1940's.
All the stories have the same title and all have similar themes, yet they are very different from one another. They are flawless and well-observed, almost a tromp l'oeil of words. There are no superfluous sentences and the stories read beautifully. Joan Wickersham is a wonder and I expect more work from her that will make me catch and hold my breath.
February 4, 2013
This is an exception to the rule book for me. I rarely read collections of short stories.
The genre lends itself to quick contemplative thoughts. In just a few pages, the writer makes his point and then you need to put that away to move onto the next unrelated topic often without giving it time to develop. For me it is equivalent to sitting down and eating and entire box of mixed chocolates. Too much, too sweet for one sitting.
What makes The News From Spain different is that it is variations on the same theme: love. Love in all its complicated and twisty forms. The range of her characters, the range of her locations, the range of her stories add a great depth of dimension to the one theme she follows throughout... love.
My biggest regret with this book, is that I don't currently belong to a book group. Here is a book of short stories that provokes discussion.
The genre lends itself to quick contemplative thoughts. In just a few pages, the writer makes his point and then you need to put that away to move onto the next unrelated topic often without giving it time to develop. For me it is equivalent to sitting down and eating and entire box of mixed chocolates. Too much, too sweet for one sitting.
What makes The News From Spain different is that it is variations on the same theme: love. Love in all its complicated and twisty forms. The range of her characters, the range of her locations, the range of her stories add a great depth of dimension to the one theme she follows throughout... love.
My biggest regret with this book, is that I don't currently belong to a book group. Here is a book of short stories that provokes discussion.
March 4, 2013
I don't know much at all about Tantric practice, but a friend once described to me tantric sex, in which the gestures are spare, slow, understated, drawn out, thorough but unelaborated...and the exquisite tension but in and between the line of The News From Spain reminded me of that. Along the way, the forays into metatext somehow didn't satisfy...except to make the book appeal to me as being, in addition to a collection of really fine stories, secretive, deeply personal, impassioned, cryptic, encoded.
July 7, 2015
I liked how the phrase "the news from Spain" appears in all of the stories in this book. It's not really significant; I just liked how the author managed to fit it in to all these different stories. All of them are love stories, but definitely not pat romances. The man and woman usually don't love equally, or in the same way. In several of the stories, one or both of the lovers is married to someone else. Timing is off, secrets are kept, we don't really know each other at all. In other words, these stories felt heartbreakingly like real life.
September 21, 2024
I chose this book for an overseas trip, thinking it would be good enough to engage me during a 9-hour flight, but not so good that I wouldn't mind ditching it at the first hotel. I was so wrong. These stories are so good. Simultaneously steely-eyed and delicate, pitilessly frank and meltingly human, Wickersham has incredible perceptiveness into how we defend ourselves from what we truly want, and her clean, sober writing voice lulls you into a receptive state for some devastating insights. The revelations here are not shocking in a trashy tabloid way - rather, they shock for their rawly vulnerable, entirely plausible simplicity. It's difficult to stun me with a confession of love. This book stunned me several times. It's indisputably a keeper, and as proof I carried it all over Italy long after I finished it.
Read
September 15, 2023hm. This is one of the first books I marked as "to read" in goodreads, over 10 years ago, and it kept popping up when I would sort my books in reverse chronological order, so I finally decided to read it.
I felt the writing at a sentence level was very good, but it took me a long time to read this collection. I didn't find it propulsive, partially because it's a collection of stories, but more because they were too... vague for me, or too abstract. The wording was lovely, but I guess there wasn't a strong or clear enough narrative for me, which I recognize may be more my own weakness than the book's.
I felt the writing at a sentence level was very good, but it took me a long time to read this collection. I didn't find it propulsive, partially because it's a collection of stories, but more because they were too... vague for me, or too abstract. The wording was lovely, but I guess there wasn't a strong or clear enough narrative for me, which I recognize may be more my own weakness than the book's.
August 13, 2023
I really enjoyed this series of short stories. Some were more engaging than others; specifically the last story- wow. I want to go back and reread it. Essentially it’s seven short love stories entitled “The News from Spain,” and embedded in each story is this small theme. It’s kind of like Where’s Waldo when you find it. I love a good short story and these were extremely well written. I breezed right through this book, enjoying most of what I read.
October 25, 2019
I am not sure: (a) Why I bought this book; (b) Why I read it to the end; or (c) Why the author wrote it.
It's a series of short stories, all containing the phrase "the news from Spain." That's about all I could find that (supposedly) tied them all together.
Wickersham is a talented writer. But the characters were uninspiring (and uninspired) to me. A few days after finishing the book, I can barely remember what it was about.
It's a series of short stories, all containing the phrase "the news from Spain." That's about all I could find that (supposedly) tied them all together.
Wickersham is a talented writer. But the characters were uninspiring (and uninspired) to me. A few days after finishing the book, I can barely remember what it was about.
December 19, 2018
I loved this book and did want it to end. It was charged with a profound humanity and rare, unembellished clear-sightedness through the woods of love. Her characters were vividly alive, her stories gracefully linked and her language understated and elegant.
May 31, 2022
Whew, that was a head trip! I am really not into short stories. That said, I want to start this book over and sabor each story individually. This book's themes were about love, passion, and infidelity and self-knowledge, and the games people play and the choices we make. Just very interesting.
November 26, 2023
Not all the stories were for me, but the writing itself compelled me to keep reading. Amazing!
February 2, 2013
2/1/2013: Elegant, charming, poignant: Wickersham's prose is finely and femininely tuned, and the stories in this collection (each entitled The News from Spain, and each including some reference to the idea), are lovely. As far as I can tell, that is the only connection among them--except that they are all about problematic love (though really, is there any other kind?). She seems to be using the device of always including something about TNFS as an exercise; how can I write seven works with the following rules: 1) they're about love; 2) they include a reference to TNFS; and 3) they are written from a woman's point of view?
Every other aspect of her story telling is fair game for manipulation: voice (one story is written in the second person), tense (there are a few sections written in the conditional), and structure. Sometimes the scaffolding of all this experimentation shows through; I lost patience in a few stories, where it seemed clear that she was trying to achieve something--I wasn't sure what--and that effort obscured the story itself. There is some wandering; some choppiness; some straining.
I loved most Wickersham's ability to evoke an intense emotional response through a perfectly constructed scene. The plots won't stay with me, but her images and their attendant poignancy will.
Every other aspect of her story telling is fair game for manipulation: voice (one story is written in the second person), tense (there are a few sections written in the conditional), and structure. Sometimes the scaffolding of all this experimentation shows through; I lost patience in a few stories, where it seemed clear that she was trying to achieve something--I wasn't sure what--and that effort obscured the story itself. There is some wandering; some choppiness; some straining.
I loved most Wickersham's ability to evoke an intense emotional response through a perfectly constructed scene. The plots won't stay with me, but her images and their attendant poignancy will.
March 4, 2013
Do not be fooled by the subtitle of this book. It should be called "Seven Variations on Infidelity." Also, it is not "A" love story, but at least 12 of them, and they all end with everyone living Miserably Ever After. None of them appear to be connected, except with a clever aside in each about something going on in Spain.
I gave this 4 stars because it is one of the most beautifully written books I've read recently, and all of the stories are engrossing. It just made me deeply sad to read it. There is very little hope for romance, or enduring love, or anything that one remotely hopes for when they get married. When a friend mentioned that she was between reading this and something else, I told her to read something else. I hate for my friends to be sad.
So...next on my list is Mindy Kaling's comedy book "Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?" because the last 2 books I've read (this and Tribes of Hattie) have put me into a funk for which I may need medication. Dear Authors, It is not a crime to write well, and to write about happy things simultaneously. If I want to be depressed, I will watch the news, or Argo. I have two toddlers and do not want to spend my free time being told how awful the world is, and how little chance there is for being happy in it. Sincerely, Me.
I gave this 4 stars because it is one of the most beautifully written books I've read recently, and all of the stories are engrossing. It just made me deeply sad to read it. There is very little hope for romance, or enduring love, or anything that one remotely hopes for when they get married. When a friend mentioned that she was between reading this and something else, I told her to read something else. I hate for my friends to be sad.
So...next on my list is Mindy Kaling's comedy book "Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?" because the last 2 books I've read (this and Tribes of Hattie) have put me into a funk for which I may need medication. Dear Authors, It is not a crime to write well, and to write about happy things simultaneously. If I want to be depressed, I will watch the news, or Argo. I have two toddlers and do not want to spend my free time being told how awful the world is, and how little chance there is for being happy in it. Sincerely, Me.
November 12, 2012
Ever since reading Nam Le's brilliant short story collection, The Boat, a couple years ago, I have been more willing to pick up short stories than I used to be. But there are so many books in my "To Read" stacks that I probably would not have given this collection a chance had it not been for Liz's strong recommendation. I was not disappointed. With seven very different situations and sets of characters, Wickersham explores and describes all kinds of love relationships, proving that love is never simple. "You meet someone, you fall in love, and..." you may marry, one of you may already be married, your love may be unrequited, you may never speak of your love, you may find you are totally inadequate at loving, your relationship may turn into a disaster for any number of reasons. This is no light-weight mushy look at romance but rather an unusually perceptive anatomy of many different kinds of relationships, each story meaty enough to feel like its own separate novel. And the author manages to insert the phrase "the news from Spain" into each story, just to make us smile?
Recommended.
Recommended.
January 25, 2013
The best thing about this book, in my opinion, is its clever title. A neat idea and a good marketing ploy. Write seven stories with the same title and say that they’re all variations on a love story. And pick a title that really piques people’s curiosity: The News from Spain. What news from Spain could possibly be appearing in seven variations on a love story? (There’s no news from Spain in the stories. Wickersham manages to use “the news from Spain” in one sentence of each story. And the stories are not variation on the same story, if you're expecting something like Run, Lola, Run.)
Even though the stories and their characters are grounded in reality -- no starry-eyed romantic fantasies here -- and they try to convey the longings and joys and doubts and disappointments of love, ultimately I found them uninteresting and uninspiring. With the exception of one, none of them really spoke to me. They felt bland and flat.
Even though the stories and their characters are grounded in reality -- no starry-eyed romantic fantasies here -- and they try to convey the longings and joys and doubts and disappointments of love, ultimately I found them uninteresting and uninspiring. With the exception of one, none of them really spoke to me. They felt bland and flat.
February 26, 2013
This was a great book. It sort of had me at hello, since all the stories were titled The News From Spain, which I found incredibly clever. I was left confused with the last two in the collection, hence the dip to four stars, because they contained flashbacks that were not directly linked to the non-flashback portions of the story. I knew she was going for some kind of tie-in, and I really worked to figure it out for her, but at best I could feel a link I was barely missing, and a general thematic similarity (ie: adultury). I would love to read this with one of my friends and compare notes, to puzzle those last two out. Ironically, they were the two that most grabbed me in the jacket synopsis. I found her writing a good deal like Alice Munro, who I think is brilliant.
September 25, 2015
I bought this book because it was recommended by a staff member in a bookstore in Madison, Wisconsin. One of those little write-ups people do. This one I think said "just read it." I could not tear myself away from this book. I had things to do and took it with me everywhere.
It is not an easy read. It is painful. Love is painful and reading this book it becomes more painful. There is a lot of sadness in this book, be forewarned. It is honest and true to life. It spans decades and centuries. There is at least one paragraph of the book I would want to save forever to read over and over but i will not quote it here. You may have your own excerpt you prefer and since it is close to the end of the book, it might give something away.
It is not an easy read. It is painful. Love is painful and reading this book it becomes more painful. There is a lot of sadness in this book, be forewarned. It is honest and true to life. It spans decades and centuries. There is at least one paragraph of the book I would want to save forever to read over and over but i will not quote it here. You may have your own excerpt you prefer and since it is close to the end of the book, it might give something away.
October 10, 2012
To read a Joan Wickersham book is to read something entirely new. As was the case with her masterful Suicide Index, The News From Spain enters territory unchartered by any other writer working today. The News From Spain dazzles in its construction, its characters, and in its language that is at once crystal-clear and evocative. Not only does Wickersham break down the boundaries of what we understand as the literary genre, she also entertains us with a wonderful read.
March 11, 2013
This is an amazing collection of stories about all different types of love. As with all short story collections, there were stories that hit harder than others and some I didn't enjoy as much as others, but there's so much messy reality recorded in these pages that I think there's something for almost everyone to relate to. Beautifully written, and make sure you know the historical background for some of her pieces when you read, too. It just adds to it.
May 23, 2013
I love a good short story and Joan Wickersham writes some good ones here. The writing style is unobtrusive in the best sense of the word, it's deft and interesting but not showy or heavy-handed, and so you are free to relax and hear the tale. Nice balance between observation, characterization and story. Will read her again.
October 20, 2012
Oh, what a lovely book. Consisting of 7 short stories, all with the title, The News from Spain. Very character driven, beautifully written, this is a book that makes you think of your life, compare and contrast with the stories and characters. I can't wait to read more by Joan Wickersham.
December 14, 2013
This book came highly recommended. I lost it to someone in a book swap and then was lucky enough to get the last copy at the bookstore. I've read it slowly over the course of several months, savoring each story. Beautiful writing - I highly recommend this book!
April 4, 2016
I wouldn't *exactly* call these love stories. As I described to my husband, they're more about how two people can be so miserable together. But really, really well-written.
But don't let that description put you off this collection. It was really, really good.
But don't let that description put you off this collection. It was really, really good.
June 19, 2013
Love lost, unrequited, and in altered states from the point of view of middle aged women. Loved the stories. I was hooked.
July 26, 2014
Excellent! I loved this innovative--and often funny--story collection by Joan Wickersham. Highly recommended.
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