The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty by Eudora Welty

Eudora Welty, what a fab name! Doesn't it sound just like she's going to be one of those dynamite 1940s-50s-esque southern American writers? Me and my Tennessee Williams fetish, we just had to confirm it for ourselves.

So it's all true, with the exception of that element of... corruption that wafts over William's stories. Welty's thick book contains a mighty convincing array of voices and circumstances, all written with a hint of mystery dangling so you really pay attention. There's the un-favourite daughter in a family of village nobility. There's the guilt-stricken carny who was duped by his own sideshow. I liked The Key, about the marriage of the deaf-and-dumb couple. In this one, Welty writes so well about the little nothings of life, flickers, moments, that sometimes mean everything. This bit is from The Key:

"Everyone, except Albert and Ellie Morgan, looked up for a moment. On the floor the key had made a fierce metallic sound like a challenge, a sound of seriousness. It almost made people jump. It was regarded as an insult, a very personal question, in the quiet peaceful room where the insects were tapping at the ceiling and each person was allowed to sit among his possessions and wait for an unquestioned departure. Little walls of reproach went up about them all."

"Little walls of reproach" I love it. Shit, I wish I'd had that phrase for all the years I lived in Toronto the Reproachful. For this bit alone I say this writer is great.

Okay so having said that, I should also add you can have too much of a good thing. I made it through half this book before giving up and putting it down for good. Progress slowed significantly when I finished the first section, up to 1949. In the second section - as far as I read - her stories focus on the characters that populate a certain county. They ramble more than the earlier stories and my limited attention span was not up for it. So that's it, on to the next book.

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