News from the World is a short book of short pieces from the novelist Paula Fox. The entries come in reverse chronological order, from 2011 to 1968; an interesting choice that makes them land differently than they would in the more traditional order.
The first several pieces are pure reminiscence about people and incidents from Fox's life. They are well written, but come across as engaging dinner party conversations rather than standalone narratives. Fox's style eschews interiority, so we learn little about her personality. I imagine these pieces would be more interesting to readers of her novels or those interested in the midcentury upper East Side milieu in which she lived.
About halfway through the book are two very fine stories: "The Broad Estates of Death," about a couple visiting the husband's dying father, and "Grace," about an unlikeable man who adopts a dog. The man in "Grace" often corrects people's grammar ("'Lovingly' is not an adverb that applies to literature"), which creates an interesting reflection when two of the next essays, from a few years previous, concern the use of language.
The pieces, both fiction and non, get shorter as the book comes to its close. The stories from the 1970s and 1980s count as "sudden fiction."
No comments:
Post a Comment