The Magellan House: Stories

by John Rolfe Gardiner

From the award-winning author of Somewhere in France and Double Stitch, a story collection so varied that it could only have sprung from the imagination of a master. The Magellan House cuts to the bone, its characters trying to maintain their decency and sanity while surrounded by duplicitous, confused, manipulative people. In Fugitive Color, an American painter's year in Provence teaching for at an idyllic art college is destroyed by the perverse intrigues of staff and students; In The Magellan House, a poor family takes over their landlord's seaside mansion after the revolution in Portugal--but their daughter maintains a secret love affair with a scion of the deposed family; In The Head of Farnham Hall a headmaster is forced to leave her post because a student wrongly accused of death-threats takes pathological advantage of the contrition owed her; and in The Doll House, a rural French priest is ruined by his own innocence, incapable of grasping the modern world around him in all its obscenity.

304 pages, Hardcover

First published July 28, 2004

Reviews

[Nancy barrett · Rating 3 out of 5]

For the most part the stories were good, but certainly not gripping. Some meandered and were hard to follow.

[Margarita · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have to say I have stopped for now, after 3 stories. I don't think I'm totally abandoning this yet, but definitely have not been motivated to read on. I am not a story reader, I like huge novels, the longer the better. Maybe that's the problem? Wouldn't discourage you from reading the book though - the style is crisp and detailed, the settings are interesting and all the stories I've finished are as open-ended as life itself.