Displaying 1 of 1 1988 Format: Book Author: Martin, Valerie, 1948- Title: The consolation of nature, and other stories / Valerie Martin. Publisher, Date: Boston : Houghton Mifflin, [1988] ©1988 Description: 147 pages ; 22 cm Notes: 455608 ; *455609 LCCN: 87019735 ISBN: 0395467888 * 0395436117 Other Number: 16226843 System Availability: 2 # System items in: 2 # Local items: 2 # Local items in: 2 Current Holds: 0 Place Request Add to My List Expand All | Collapse All Availability Fiction/Biography Profile Genre CollectionFictionPsychological Topics WomenHateDeath and dyingMan and naturePetsSupernatural phenomena Time Period -- 20th century Large Cover Image Trade Reviews Library Journal ReviewMartin includes ten stories here, two previously published in literary magazines. Preoccupied with hatred and death, the tales are either weak imitations of Edgar Allan Poe or reveries of middle-aged women resentful of their personal character deficiencies. They rely on insufficient explanation for plot shifts, inserted digression, unexplained or underdeveloped characters, and excessive exposition. In fact, sometimes the stories are all exposition, as in ``The Parallel World,'' which gives one character's thoughts, supposedly deep and philosophical. Amateurish attempts at inner-world/other-world revelations, these pieces are inferior fiction.Glenn O. Carey, Eastern Kentucky Univ., Richmond (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.Publishers Weekly ReviewDeath, unnatural creatures, household pets and the conflicts of the natural world with the rules of society are elements in this striking collection of 10 stories by the author of A Recent Martyr, Alexandra and Set in Motion. Martin's characters are women at odds with the world or young girls confronting powerful and defining situations. In the title story a family forges new bonds as it unites in battle with a monstrous rat. In ``The Freeze,'' a woman coping with humiliating rejection is too distracted to realize that the clinking noise outside her window is that of a desperate cat who dies with his head stuck in a can. ``The Woman Who Was Never Satisfied'' must literally drain herself to find temporary solace. In ``Spats,'' a woman whose husband has left her seeks a sad revenge by having his beloved dog, so like him in many ways, put to sleep. Some of the stories have supernatural components. In ``Death Goes to a Party,'' a wolf-man turns out to be wearing no mask after all. ``Sea Lovers'' conjures up a hideous mermaid whose fatal seduction of a fisherman provides better reason than Jaws for staying out of the water. Only the last story, ``Elegy for Dead Animals,'' is less than compelling. While well written, it is more of a Dillard-like essay than a story, and Martin is only telling us what we already know deeply because we have been reading her fiction. The reiterations of theme are superfluous. But despite the letdown of the last few pages, The Consolation of Nature is an outstanding collection. (January 25) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reservedBooklist ReviewThe sensuality, carnality, viciousness, and intuitive sensitivity of beasts, domestic or wild, is the theme pervading this collection of 10 stories. Martin writes about people recognizing these traits in animals and coming to terms with the same qualities in themselves. ``Death Goes to a Party'' is exemplary. A woman who prides herself on being able to perceive what lies in the hearts of other people goes to a masquerade disguised as death; there she meets and later beds a man dressed in a wolf's head. But his mask can not be shed! Every story here is well plotted, full of relevant and convincing detail, bearing a steady and illuminated path from opening sentence to denouement. BH. [OCLC] 87-19735Kirkus ReviewThe psychological intensities and explorations of Martin's novels (A Recent Martyr, 1987; Alexandra, 1979; Set in Motion, 1978) have a tendency to grow thin and fable-like in this volume of her stories. Strongest here is ""The Woman Who Was Never Satisfied,"" the bizarre yet compellingly--and believably--limned story of a woman who, after the death of her husband, believes herself inhabited by the spirit of two snakes, and who can obtain sexual gratification only when blood is drawn from her veins. Other pieces, however, exploring less and withdrawing into greater conventionalism, suffer from a proportionate lightness of character to a weightiness of allegory. ""The Cat in the Attic"" is especially artificial in this way (the parable of a vain woman incapable of loving others); ""Sea Lovers"" achieves a lyric beauty at moments as it is told from the point of view of a mermaid, but when the mermaid comes ashore, castrates a man on the beach, then is washed back to sea, the story narrows toward the point of a questionable (or obvious) message. More commonplace, ""Death Goes to a Party"" is a sluggish Hawthorne-esque tale of a masquerade party at which one of the masks (that of a seductively bare-chested man in a wolf's head) turns out to be real. An abandoned wife Frills the aggressive male dog her faithless husband left behind (""Spats""), and another woman, after a sexual humiliation, finds a cat frozen to death on her doorstep (""Freeze""), though in neither story do the women rise much above the one. dimensional, and the men they desire are meagerly conventionalized sketches. Closing the volume are two prose poems or extended Études (""The Parallel World,"" about a woman who observes closely the teeming insect life in tall grass; and ""Elegy for Dead Animals"") that are sometimes lovely but suggest work dominated by symbol more than enlivened by character. Stories, in all, that have their moments of real penetration, but that on balance seem more to strain for their substance than to grow out of it. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission. Librarian's View Syndetics Unbound Displaying 1 of 1
