Sweet Land Stories

Rating:
Summary: Short stories that are a cut above the rest.
Review: I first became acquainted with the marvelous short stories of E.L. Doctorow while reading the 2002 Best American Short Stories anthology; in fact, the first story, "The House on the Plains" included there is also in SWEET LAND STORIES. I often read short stories and Doctorow is easily one of my favorite authors of this genre. His short stories never fail to entertain and amuse me to the last sentence. While short stories from other authors often leave me with a flustered feeling his stories are always delicious and pleasurable.

The common denominator between the stories in SWEET LAND STORIES is a unique relationship with the land that they live on and travel through. Often these characters are restlessly traveling from one state to another to get away from the past and start anew.

The reason why I didn't give this book a higher rating is because it only contained five stories. It merely sharpened my appetite for more of E.L. Doctorow. SWEET LAND STORIES is much too thin to satisfy its serious fans, but I'll take what I can get in hopes of him publishing more in the near future. 4.5 stars. Recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Great fast summer read
Review: I first became acquainted with the marvelous short stories of E.L. Doctorow while reading the 2002 Best American Short Stories anthology; in fact, the first story, "The House on the Plains" included there is also in SWEET LAND STORIES. I often read short stories and Doctorow is easily one of my favorite authors of this genre. His short stories never fail to entertain and amuse me to the last sentence. While short stories from other authors often leave me with a flustered feeling his stories are always delicious and pleasurable.

The common denominator between the stories in SWEET LAND STORIES is a unique relationship with the land that they live on and travel through. Often these characters are restlessly traveling from one state to another to get away from the past and start anew.

The reason why I didn't give this book a higher rating is because it only contained five stories. It merely sharpened my appetite for more of E.L. Doctorow. SWEET LAND STORIES is much too thin to satisfy its serious fans, but I'll take what I can get in hopes of him publishing more in the near future. 4.5 stars. Recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Classic reading
Review: I have never read Doctorow before ~~ I have heard of Billy Bathgate but I have not read it. After reading this slim volume of short stories, I think I will add it to my wish list as well as his other works.

Doctorow writes realistically and grittingly of real life. He writes of scam artists, kidnappers who returned a baby, living in a religious commune, a woman who survived three marriages only to rediscover herself in Hollywood and a murder mystery that the White House is intent on keeping covered up as a dead boy was found in the Rose Garden. All of these characters are different from one another and he manages to put in new perspectives of human nature in each of the stories. Sometimes, it's gritty and not so pleasant to read, the stories themselves are compelling and interesting.

Now that I've "discovered" Doctorow through a mutual friend, I will now keep looking for his books to read in hopes they are as good as his short stories have proven.

9-11-04

Rating:
Summary: Great fast summer read
Review: I loved it!!! This was a very provocative and entertaining group of stories which held my attention. It did just what it was designed to do.... Get the reader to think but not too much.....Great fast read

Rating:
Summary: Masterful Storyteller
Review: In this slim volume of five stories, E.L. Doctorow captures a desperate vision of the American dream. Whether it's the desire for family, money, or faith, these are people who are living on the edge, and trying to find their footing. Unforgiving, yet hopeful, they're each a gem.

Rating:
Summary: All Surface and No Depth
Review: One of my favorite books is E.L. Doctorow's RAGTIME, so I really expected to love SWEET LAND STORIES. Instead of loving them, I was extremely disappointed.

While the stories in SWEET LAND STORIES are well written, they're all trite and clichéd. They're mildly entertaining, but not one of them offers us a fresh insight or original look at the world and the characterization is both stock and paper-thin. There's not one character, male or female, who's is truly believable.

The plots are just as thin as the characters. They are so sketchy, they read more like outlines than actual stories and they're all cliché. Every one of these stories represents material we've seen done before and done quite a bit better as well.

Another thing I found disappointing about SWEET LAND STORIES was the fact that they are almost entirely narrative. Doctorow certainly has the ability to create convincing characters and dialogue, to give us stories with complex themes and a fresh look at old problems. As I read the stories in SWEET LAND STORIES, I had to ask myself over and over: What happened?

The stories contained in SWEET LAND STORIES are quintessential American stories and the characters are quintessential Americans, but in a bad way. Doctorow seems intent on hitting the reader over the head again and again with the fact that America is a "sweet land" and that his very flawed characters have the ability, in America, at least, of moving on, of transforming themselves, of reinventing their lives. I might have believed it had the characters and the stories had any depth, but as it is, they're so shallow I simply couldn't buy their ability to do much at all.

Sadly, the stories in SWEET LAND STORIES are all surface and no depth. SWEET LAND STORIES is an extremely disappointing collection from one of America's premier authors. Recommended only for those who want to keep up on everything Doctorow writes.

Rating:
Summary: Gripping Tales of Life on the Fringes
Review: Short stories are quite a challenge. You have to establish characters, mood, setting, conflict and context quickly. Then you have to move forward surely to your target with little wasted effort. If you accomplish all that, you only succeed if the story teaches you something that you find compelling. By those standards, the five stories in Sweet Land Stories are a tour de force.

I was surprised to find this because I find Mr. Doctorow's novels to move in a very leisurely pace. But here, that pace turns into just the right speed.

What the stories have in common is that you enter into worlds that operate at the fringes of society rather than near their center. So your characters have different problems than you and I think about every day. They also have unique solutions to their problems. The shift in focus is so complete that it's almost like reading science fiction. But the shift has a tether back to our lives . . . a tether that makes the lessons universal for us all. It's very impressive.

In the first story, A House on the Plains, we have an attractive mother and her son who find themselves living on a farm they don't know how to operate after the mother's husband died in Chicago. The mother likes men. What they do next will surprise you with its chilling elements. The story is told from the perspective of the son which makes it quite macabre. What is our responsibility to our parents . . . and to our fellow humans?

Baby Wilson will haunt you. A young woman decides to kidnap a baby. She's convinced the baby is hers. How will her boyfriend deal with this? You will find yourself in the shoes of the boyfriend as you share his dilemma. How do you protect the baby and your girlfriend?

Walter John Harmon takes you deeply into the spiritual life of a cult whose messianic leader is under siege. How will the challenges of that siege affect the leader and the cult? You experience the story from the perspective of a cult member who is a lawyer trying to protect the cult. The story raises fine questions about self-deception that we all practice.

Jolene: A Life is a very sad story. Born with beauty but few other advantages, Jolene floats like a wood chip atop the roiling waters of life. As her beauty is used up, she finds herself falling below the water line. And ultimately, she finds out what it is to love and lose. You see life as Jolene sees it.

Child, Dead, in the Rose Garden is a cynical look at the ethics of powerful politicians and business people that will leave you gasping with its pain. You see this from the perspective of an investigator into the unexplained death of a child in the White House's Rose Garden.

I don't remember a more compelling set of short stories written since the turn of the century. Don't miss them!






Rating:
Summary: Doctorow Delivers Gripping Stories about the Ordinary Man
Review: SWEET LAND STORIES is another superlative venture for E.L. Doctorow, one of the very finest writers in the country. Though known best for his larger tomes that mingle history and fiction as well as anyone has ever done, this small book of five stories reveals a master in creating characters and stories in a few pages that become indelible in the reader's mind. In his hands the most apparently simple settings become backdrops for complex, extensive tapestries that reveal how the 'little man/woman' can be pitched and tossed into the most bizarre tangle of events and yet somehow survive. In a time when many of us worry about the spiritual vacuum of life in the 21st Century, when the individual seems buried in the media pile of homogenation, look to Doctorow's fertile mind to remember and perhaps redefine the role of the Everyman. These stories are varied and extraordinarily well written: 'A House on the Plains' seems to be a tale of survival found in fleeing an urban center to a new life for a family on the plains, only to become a wholly different surprising macabre tale in the end: 'Baby Wilson' focuses on a couple who walk out a hospital with someone else's baby, flee, and watch their lives mutate; 'Walter John Harmon' concerns a community of brainwashed folk under the influence of a Spiritual Leader and the consequences of manipulation in the religion realm; 'Jolene: A Life' follows the course of an abused orphan through the country as she moves from one bad husband to the next - holding our hearts in her hand; 'Child, Dead, in the Rose Garden' is Doctorow's indictment of the credibility gap in the White House management of Intelligence sharing - a different and terrifying aside on terrorism so much in focus today. Doctorow tells these stories with elegant prose, terse and delicate economy, and once again proves he can spin a yarn better than most writers active today. A Brilliant Collection!

Rating:
Summary: Doctorow is at his best in this collection of short stories
Review: The name E.L. Doctorow evokes the expression "the great American novel." His books --- BILLY BATHGATE, RAGTIME, THE WATERWORKS and CITY OF GOD, to name a few --- exemplify the recurring themes and enduring ethos of America's landscape and peoples. And SWEET LAND STORIES, Doctorow's latest collection of short stories, continues his literary tradition of writing about uniquely American folk.

In "A House on the Plains," Aunt Dora is a scam artist who packs up her family, leaves (escapes, really) Chicago, and moves to the country. Once there, the scheming and scamming begin anew, displaying Doctorow's fascination with and uncanny understanding of the darker, seedier side of human nature.

This theme persists in "Baby Wilson," but is tinged with a compassion that has become the hallmark of many of Doctorow's questionable characters. Karen, who is not right of mind, kidnaps a baby; the deed is malicious, but the desire for a child is not. In fact, it's innocent and pure. One can't help but feel sympathy for both her and her beau, who makes every effort to protect her and do the right thing by her.

"Jolene: A Life" is a study of a life spiraling downward, and at the center is a young lady who appears incapable of regaining some semblance of control, by no fault of her own. Her tale is heroically tragic.

Doctorow gives us an odd slice of life in "Walter John Harmon" --- cult, commune life, that is. Harmon, a former mechanic in a small Kansas town, preaches the goal of Seventh Attainment. In what won't be a surprising plot event, Harmon absconds with the community's wealth; but what might surprise you is the community's unwavering and blind devotion to what he preached, even after he's gone.

And finally, "Child, Dead, In the Rose Garden" is a powerful mystery packed into a slim few pages. A body, a detective, a deception.

Doctorow is at his best in SWEET LAND STORIES, tales about people in all their raw humanity.(...).