What do you think?
Nine english short stories
Lire en anglais Collection dirigée par Henri Yvinec Cette collection s'adresse à tous ceux qui désirent découvrir ou redécouvrir le plaisir de lire dans leur langue d'origine les oeuvres des plus grands auteurs contemporains.
Notes en anglais en regard du texte, lexique bilingue en fin de volume dispensent d'un recours fastidieux au dictionnaire.
Nine English Short Stories
présentées par Pierre Gallego Le dernier jour, pathétique, de la très vieille Martha…
Un chevalier de Saint-Jean, au terme de sa vie, en conversation avec un simple d'esprit, voleur de coqs… Une vieille dame qui se souvient d'une belle histoire d'amour… Et Tom-Billy Teare qui se démène comme un beau diable pour sauver le testament de l'oncle Quaggin…
Notes en anglais en regard du texte, lexique bilingue en fin de volume dispensent d'un recours fastidieux au dictionnaire.
Nine English Short Stories
présentées par Pierre Gallego Le dernier jour, pathétique, de la très vieille Martha…
Un chevalier de Saint-Jean, au terme de sa vie, en conversation avec un simple d'esprit, voleur de coqs… Une vieille dame qui se souvient d'une belle histoire d'amour… Et Tom-Billy Teare qui se démène comme un beau diable pour sauver le testament de l'oncle Quaggin…
224 pages, Pocket Book
First published April 1, 2002
About the author
Virginia Woolf
2,075 books30.5k followers(Adeline) Virginia Woolf was an English novelist and essayist regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century.
During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929) with its famous dictum, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."
During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929) with its famous dictum, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
January 23, 2024
Updating as I finish each story...wow Jean Rhys is amazing!
The Searchlight - Virginia Woolf 4.75*
Superficially, it's about an old woman searching through memories while waiting to go to the theatre. And it might seem heavy handed, this metaphor of the searchlight, while the planes are flying overhead, but there's such depth: it made me think about the difference between memory and reality, about similarities between generations, aging and the thin line between life and death, about how the light we put on something changes it how things in the shadows are still there even if we don't see them. And on a concrete level it was written in or at least published in 1944 so we can feel the anxiety of wartime and not knowing what will happen next. Very clever!
Out of the Rose - WB Yeats 4*
Not typically my kind of story but it got me in the end. It's about a night who fights to the death for the cause of some villagers whose pig was stolen.
It would make a great bedtime story for a kid who loves adventure, knights and the like, and it's an interesting follow up to the searchlight because it's also about perspective, memories, aging, and how things get passed on or not depending on who sees them. With the addition of a religious allegory.
"A voice...had told him how men would turn from the light of their own hearts, and bow down before outer order and outer fixity, and that then the light would cease, and none escape the curse except the foolish good man who could not think, and the passionate wicked man who would not. Already...the light of the heart was shining with less lustre, and as it paled, an infection was touching the world with corruption; and none of those who had seen clearly the truth could enter into the kingdom of God...if they stayed on willingly in the corrupted world; and so they must prove their anger against the Powers of Corruption by dying in the service of the Rose."
If a knight falls and the only one to witness it is a simpleton, is his death worth any less?
Last day of spring - Celia Fremlin 4.5*
Martha loves Thomas so much, she'd give him the sunlight from her side of the bed of she could, but the welfare woman's coming to take him away because Martha can't care for him anymore. Really, she can still take care of him, at the very least she can make him a sunny side up egg, once she gets up enough strength to get out of bed... Now where did she put that egg?! What the devil, the pan's gone black already?!...
Wait where is Thomas?!
Slice of life with crime story vibes. Almost as clever as The Searchlight.
The evil that men do - Elizabeth Bowen 3.39*
A very British tale about a wife and a husband, the everyday violence of living and loving and the temptation of an affair.
Brings up interesting questions like: Does hope destroy marriages or keep stoking the fires? Do couples stay together merely by fate? If a letter is never received, is the message still sent?
... But ultimately I didn't find it as clever as it intended to be.
Things - D.H. LAWRENCE # of *'s =???
Meet the perfect millennial Instagram/YouTube couple of Lawrence's day as they are living their "free" lives with all of the perfect things they need to really enjoy their nomadic lifestyle and watch the shine fade with time and age. Suddenly they're 40 and somebody had to get a real job.
Their are moments when this story is really clever, but others where it's quite heavy-handed. I think you could cut out a few lines here and there and have a much tighter story, but it's still cool //not sure if that's the right word// to see the parallels between this couple and modern conceptions of freedom on social media, especially the underlying fact that wealth is needed to live so "freely" fantasy that even freedom can become a burden.
The sound of the river - Jean Rhys 4.78*
Whelp, looks l have to read more by this lady. I have never* felt more anxious reading a story. ///*Well maybe some of the stories in Catapult by Emily Fridlund ///
A couple goes on a trip and the wife is feeling afraid, melancholic... Something about the climate. Is it what's in the room or the weather?
Is her husband really listening to her? There's a breaking this fourth wall moment in this story, and we really don't know if she's a reliable narrator out not. Are you like the men in this story or are you like the river?
Damn I could read this story multiple times but it made me sick to my stomach!!!
...anywho this author seems like a woman before her time - her autobiography is friggin called Smile Please!?! As the kids say Yaass queen!!!
Apparently her novel Wide Sargasso Sea is also about people trapped : real or imagined does it matter?
Death of an old dog - Antonia Frasier 3.25*
A wicked thing done with good intentions or a good thing done with wicked intentions, what's the difference? Yet another take off the everyday violence that families do to each other, the cruelty disguised as love, the careless caring.a little heavy handed but still que good.
The other side of the hedge - EM Forster 3.9999*
Being over the hill has its advantages. It's much easier to see the big picture, but it's also so frustrating because either via personal experience or extrapolating data/events, you come to realize that there's nothing new under the sun. That this race to achieve, advance, bring and hustle is nothing new, it may look different online but societal expectations have always been there and some of us are lucky enough to stumble off the path or step behind the curtain and get the opportunity to experience a life where you can just paint (dance, saying, wow etc) because you like it, not because it will get you likes or commissions etc. and perhaps the only other chance you get is in death...
The putting away of uncle Quaggin - Nigel Kneale
The Searchlight - Virginia Woolf 4.75*
Superficially, it's about an old woman searching through memories while waiting to go to the theatre. And it might seem heavy handed, this metaphor of the searchlight, while the planes are flying overhead, but there's such depth: it made me think about the difference between memory and reality, about similarities between generations, aging and the thin line between life and death, about how the light we put on something changes it how things in the shadows are still there even if we don't see them. And on a concrete level it was written in or at least published in 1944 so we can feel the anxiety of wartime and not knowing what will happen next. Very clever!
Out of the Rose - WB Yeats 4*
Not typically my kind of story but it got me in the end. It's about a night who fights to the death for the cause of some villagers whose pig was stolen.
It would make a great bedtime story for a kid who loves adventure, knights and the like, and it's an interesting follow up to the searchlight because it's also about perspective, memories, aging, and how things get passed on or not depending on who sees them. With the addition of a religious allegory.
"A voice...had told him how men would turn from the light of their own hearts, and bow down before outer order and outer fixity, and that then the light would cease, and none escape the curse except the foolish good man who could not think, and the passionate wicked man who would not. Already...the light of the heart was shining with less lustre, and as it paled, an infection was touching the world with corruption; and none of those who had seen clearly the truth could enter into the kingdom of God...if they stayed on willingly in the corrupted world; and so they must prove their anger against the Powers of Corruption by dying in the service of the Rose."
If a knight falls and the only one to witness it is a simpleton, is his death worth any less?
Last day of spring - Celia Fremlin 4.5*
Martha loves Thomas so much, she'd give him the sunlight from her side of the bed of she could, but the welfare woman's coming to take him away because Martha can't care for him anymore. Really, she can still take care of him, at the very least she can make him a sunny side up egg, once she gets up enough strength to get out of bed... Now where did she put that egg?! What the devil, the pan's gone black already?!...
Wait where is Thomas?!
Slice of life with crime story vibes. Almost as clever as The Searchlight.
The evil that men do - Elizabeth Bowen 3.39*
A very British tale about a wife and a husband, the everyday violence of living and loving and the temptation of an affair.
Brings up interesting questions like: Does hope destroy marriages or keep stoking the fires? Do couples stay together merely by fate? If a letter is never received, is the message still sent?
... But ultimately I didn't find it as clever as it intended to be.
Things - D.H. LAWRENCE # of *'s =???
Meet the perfect millennial Instagram/YouTube couple of Lawrence's day as they are living their "free" lives with all of the perfect things they need to really enjoy their nomadic lifestyle and watch the shine fade with time and age. Suddenly they're 40 and somebody had to get a real job.
Their are moments when this story is really clever, but others where it's quite heavy-handed. I think you could cut out a few lines here and there and have a much tighter story, but it's still cool //not sure if that's the right word// to see the parallels between this couple and modern conceptions of freedom on social media, especially the underlying fact that wealth is needed to live so "freely" fantasy that even freedom can become a burden.
The sound of the river - Jean Rhys 4.78*
Whelp, looks l have to read more by this lady. I have never* felt more anxious reading a story. ///*Well maybe some of the stories in Catapult by Emily Fridlund ///
A couple goes on a trip and the wife is feeling afraid, melancholic... Something about the climate. Is it what's in the room or the weather?
Is her husband really listening to her? There's a breaking this fourth wall moment in this story, and we really don't know if she's a reliable narrator out not. Are you like the men in this story or are you like the river?
Damn I could read this story multiple times but it made me sick to my stomach!!!
...anywho this author seems like a woman before her time - her autobiography is friggin called Smile Please!?! As the kids say Yaass queen!!!
Apparently her novel Wide Sargasso Sea is also about people trapped : real or imagined does it matter?
Death of an old dog - Antonia Frasier 3.25*
A wicked thing done with good intentions or a good thing done with wicked intentions, what's the difference? Yet another take off the everyday violence that families do to each other, the cruelty disguised as love, the careless caring.a little heavy handed but still que good.
The other side of the hedge - EM Forster 3.9999*
Being over the hill has its advantages. It's much easier to see the big picture, but it's also so frustrating because either via personal experience or extrapolating data/events, you come to realize that there's nothing new under the sun. That this race to achieve, advance, bring and hustle is nothing new, it may look different online but societal expectations have always been there and some of us are lucky enough to stumble off the path or step behind the curtain and get the opportunity to experience a life where you can just paint (dance, saying, wow etc) because you like it, not because it will get you likes or commissions etc. and perhaps the only other chance you get is in death...
The putting away of uncle Quaggin - Nigel Kneale
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review