The Wish House and Other Stories

by Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1907, has long been considered an important and vibrant, even controversial, storyteller and poet. "The Wish House and Other Stories" is a collection of Kipling's finest works, including the stories "In the House of Suddhoo," "The Disturber of Traffic," and "The Eye of Allah," the poems "The Runners," "The Return of the Children," and "The Last Ode," and his famous story about Afghanistan, "The Man Who Would Be King." Each piece was selected by poet and scholar Craig Raine, who writes in his Preface, "We need to think about Kipling. He is our greatest short-story writer, but one whose achievement is more complex and surprising than even his admirers recognize." "From the Trade Paperback edition."

Genres: Short Stories, Classics, Fiction

379 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was a journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist.

Kipling's works of fiction include The Jungle Book (1894), Kim (1901), and many short stories, including The Man Who Would Be King (1888). His poems include Mandalay (1890), Gunga Din (1890), The Gods of the Copybook Headings (1919), The White Man's Burden (1899), and If— (1910). He is regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story; his children's books are classics of children's literature; and one critic described his work as exhibiting "a versatile and luminous narrative gift".

Kipling was one of the most popular writers in the United Kingdom, in both prose and verse, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Henry James said: "Kipling strikes me personally as the most complete man of genius (as distinct from fine intelligence) that I have ever known." In 1907, at the age of 41, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first English-language writer to receive the prize, and its youngest recipient to date. He was also sounded out for the British Poet Laureateship and on several occasions for a knighthood, both of which he declined.

Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907 "in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration which characterize the creations of this world-famous author."

Kipling kept writing until the early 1930s, but at a slower pace and with much less success than before. On the night of 12 January 1936, Kipling suffered a haemorrhage in his small intestine. He underwent surgery, but died less than a week later on 18 January 1936 at the age of 70 of a perforated duodenal ulcer. Kipling's death had in fact previously been incorrectly announced in a magazine, to which he wrote, "I've just read that I am dead. Don't forget to delete me from your list of subscribers."

Reviews

[Adina ( catching up..very slowly) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Story 7/72 from Black Water 1 (The Anthology of Fantastic Literature) read together with The Short Story Club

Hmm, I wonder why the author felt the need to make this story more "interesting" by writing the dialogue in Sussex dialect. It is not more mysterious, it is almost incomprehensible. After a page I was thinking to try using Google translate but I remembered the story is actually in English (sort of).

Spoilers ahead. After reading the story I had to google the synopsis in order to figure out what happened. Which was: two older women talk about their past and it comes out that one of them visits a Wish House when the men of her life left her. Following that event she gets a very painful ulcer on her leg while he never find a wife and stays home with his mother for the rest of his life. Whatever.

Kipling is best know for The Jungle Book but it seems that he wrote quite a few short stories as well. i hope they were better than this one.

[Cecily · Rating 2 out of 5]

Review of title story:

I enjoy walking in the countryside, but however beautiful the scenery, and however interesting the people I pass, it’s far more enjoyable to walk on a firm path than squelching through heavy mud.

This short piece from 1924 is written mostly in dialogue, all of which is in Sussex dialect. Although I understood it (try saying it out loud, if you struggle), and it adds colour, the effort was distracting and sapped my enjoyment.


Image: Walking through mud (Source)

Mrs Fettley is visiting her old friend, Mrs Ashcroft:
“Much was to be said, and many ends, loose since last time, to be ravelled up on both sides, before Mrs. Fettley, with her bag of quilt-patches, took the couch beneath the window commanding the garden, and the football-ground in the valley below.”

They gossip, reminisce, talk about children and grandchildren, moan about the youth of today (wanting money, lazy, poor posture), and discuss ageing and their health. The discuss “The Wish House” with some scepticism: it gives the story its title, but seemed a little unnecessary. Things take a sadder turn, with a revelation about the sacrifice of unrequited love.

I read it a second time, and better appreciated the skill with which Kipling has plunged the reader in a very particular slice of life, but I still didn't enjoy it.

Apparently, Kipling was incensed that The Guardian’s review said this was just a retelling of Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath (like the cook, Mrs Fettley has a leg ulcer).

Short story club

I read this in Black Water: The Anthology of Fantastic Literature, by Alberto Manguel, from which I’m reading one story a week with The Short Story Club, starting 4 September 2023.

You can read this story here.

You can join the group here.

[Connie G · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the title story, "The Wish House," one of the works in "Black Water: The Book of Fantastic Literature."

Mrs Ashcroft and Mrs Fettley, good friends since childhood, are drinking tea and chatting in a Sussex dialect. Mrs Ashcroft tells about Wish House in London where a "Token" resides. Mrs Fettley feels that a Token is "a wraith of the dead or, worse still, of the living." The Token will grant someone's request to take on another person's troubles. Mrs Ashcroft confided that she was so in love with a man that she wanted to take on his pain.

Mrs Ashcroft's name is Grace which suggests the idea that a Christ-like love and the Divine are involved. The story leaves us with the question of whether the transference of pain actually occurred, or whether it was coincidence that Grace became ill. Either way, Grace's heart was full of self-sacrificing love.

[nazanin]

نمیدونم چه امتیازی بدم.
بخاطر لهجش گنگ و نافهمه. یا کلا روایتش اینجوریه.
با ترجمه حسن افشار که حتی نفهمیدم لهجرو کدوم سمتی بردن🤣
ولی یکمم بامزس

[George Ilsley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Left this for a day to stew before attempting a review.

Warning: there may be spoilers lurking ahead.

The experience of reading the title story was of something to be endured rather than enjoyed. It was a "stunt narrative" written in working class voices and I suspect this was Kipling showing off (or rather, attempting to do so). The need to struggle with a story composed of 99% dialect / vernacular / truncated words —every sentence is littered with apostrophes indicated missing letters— is reflected in my 2 star rating.

A British reader might get more out of this. I struggled to make sense out of it, and had no ideas what on earth a "whisk-drive" could be.

However, after an overnight simmering, I wondered if perhaps this story is actually about the notion of "service." Mrs. Ashcroft was in service (as they say) as a cook. Might the other elements of this story also indicate a life of service?

{Note: this review is for "The Wish House" story only, not the collection}

[Angela · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Wish House and Other Stories
Rudyard Kipling
Read with the Short Story Club https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...
Week starting 16th Oct. 2023. - Story 7
from Black Water 1 (The Anthology of Fantastic Literature)
Read in English

[Hester · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard to read in vernacular but beneath this there is a tale of a determined and irrepressible cook who makes a deal with the spirit world in order to save her man from death . Written after WW1 this story of self sacrifice and independent living would have surely appealed to the many women left caring for men returning from that conflict with injury and disabilty. That she finds solutions in the world of ghost and not the church speaks to the growing popularity of spiritualism .

[Linda Chrisman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have loved Kipling's work from the time Icwas introduced to Mowgli and his Brothers as a 6th grader. (Thank you Mrs. Thompson.). He truly understood people and Zi can see. Particularly in his poetry, the connection to the English Misic Hall tradition. His short stories are truly the work of a master craftsman.

[Jeanette]

recommended by alberto manguel

[Planck Constant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing.. Kipling's stories all come with an underlying message...