My Sister's Hand in Mine by Jane Bowles

Hey, Jane Bowles is a good writer, just like they all said. After reading her biography I began to wonder if all the fuss was warranted, considering the woman only finished one novel and one play, and spent the rest of her creative life crossing out, re-writing, and crossing out again. But you can really hear the results of her unceasing and crushing searches for her words. The book Two Serious Ladies, conveys a dual story of the subtle struggles and conflicts that two aquaintances each experiences in their respective quests. One stumbles upon love, and the other seeks a form of personal salvation from her peaceful existence of implacable self-sufficiency. Not that I relate to this at all.

I can see why the New York Times Book Review called her one of the finest "modern" writers, there is something terribly modern about the spare precision of Bowles' language.

Her play In The Summer House is even better, if you ask me. Apparently it didn't do so well when it hit Broadway in the early 1950's and I would dearly like to know why. She does a dang good job of portraying her characters, consisting largely of a number of mother-daughter sets, with emphasis on the relationship between a particular duo. The tension of the drama lies in the fact that one of the most sympathetic characters is also possibly a murderess, and while we wait to know for certain, we hope more fervently for her happiness. It's effective as a hidden crux, around which all the characters act. The extremely cool ending keeps this secret; while cracking open the door on yet another, older secret. We are left only with a distinct impression:maybe, probably, which works perfectly given the morally ambiguous ground on which these women walk.

There are ten more pieces which basically comprise the sum total of Bowles' writing. Most of these are short stories and a few are chunks from what were intended to be longer works. I'll gripe here about the few scraps of writing under the section "From The Notebooks". It makes for rather a weak finish to the book, and seems pathetic, as if her completed works aren't enough... Maybe they would have been better sprinkled in between the other works, like intermissions. That's not Jane's fault though.

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