Mothers and Daughters by Alberto Manguel (Editor)

It's never fun to review an anthology, jam-packed with so many voices. How to summarize or comment in a way that does justice to all the writers within? I'll solve that by picking on the editor - What's a man doing editing a book about mothers and daughters, anyway?

Actually he does a great job - the stories were all very good, except maybe Split Second by Daphne du Maurier, which was just okay. I met many writers for the first time, including Ai Bei from China, Hannes Meinkema from the Netherlands, Liliana Heker from Argentina, Janet Frame from New Zealand and James Purdy from the U.S. There's also a number old familiars such as Carson McCullers, Dorothy Parker and the brilliant Edith Wharton.

One story that particularly stands out for me is A Mother in India by Sara Jeannette Duncan. It's about an unusually un-maternal relationship a British officer's wife has with her daughter. The character of the mother is the narrator and her style of expression is old old-fashioned and formal, like characters in Wharton books or those of Henry James. But her tongue is sharper and more direct:

"When the expectation of Cecily came to us we made out to be delighted, knowing that the whole station pitied us, and when Cecily came herself, with a swamping burst of expense, we kept up the pretense splendidly. She was peevish, poor little thing, and she threatened convulsions from the beginning, but we both knew it was abnormal not to love her a great deal, more than life, immediately and increasingly; and we applied ourselves honestly to it, with the thermometer at a hundred and two, and the nurse leaving at the end of a fortnight because she discovered that I had only six of everything for the table."

The huge feature of this book is the short introduction Manguel provides before each story. He places every author in some sort of context - relevant bio information, an anecdote, or something clever they've said. I savoured these bits as much as the stories themselves. I wish all collections were done this way.

---

Leave a comment

name
email (if you want to be notified)
<-- Please retype the word you see here:
Notify me when someone replies to this post?

---