Rating: 
Summary: Great collection of short stories with western flavor
Review: These aren't cowboy stories, but you can see the influence of Meloy's Montana life in them. Each story is wildly different, looking at everything from love to death to horse racing. Thing I really enjoyed about the stories was the background information she invented to support each story; just simple few line references that enhance the story, such as when she talks of Mexican homes that always have room for guests because they're constantly being added onto since you don't have to pay property tax if the house is still being finished. It's little things like that dropped throughout the stories that really paint the scene for you and give the characters depth.
Rating:
Summary: Half way gone
Review: This is a collection of short stories, by Montana born author Maile Meloy. I knew nothing about the book, and it was recommended by a colleague at work, who graduated in English from Princeton.I don't believe I have read a short story since High School (To Build a Fire), even then I read them discretely, so reading an entire book of short stories was a shock to my reading sensibilities. One of the reasons I read is to become lost in the story and with short stories, well they are short, so the experience is something entirely different. I think with short stories (at least ones this short), the sensation was for me more visceral. After reading them since their breadth was narrow I could stop and ponder them, their meaning and the feeling they invoked. However since there were so many stories, it was difficult to just sit down and read one right after another. Each new story was an entirely different set of characters, different context and setting; it was difficult to be able to shift gears between stories. I had to often pause and allow time for settling before reading the next story. There were several themes that I observed acros the stories, first was a sense of life in Montana, the general attitude of its inhabitants towards life, nature and new comers. There was also as the title suggests a great deal said and unsaid about love. Every relationship was poignantly troubled in some regard, "half in love" is not half way there, but a relationship that never made it and never will or one that was and is half way gone. I don't believe there was any tale where the couple was truly happy. Even in the moving story of Kite Whistler Aquamarine where a man desperately struggles to save a filly born in the dead of winter and frost bitten, his wife has no admiration for his love and dedication to the horses, more she seems annoyed and disdainfully judgmental. Having said that I did not find the book depressing, and I enjoyed so much diversity, variety and interest across so many stories in such a short book. One thing that did bother me about the physical layout of the book was that the left page title had the authors name and the right page title had the book's name. This made it difficult to know what was the name of the short story you were reading, and it made a particular short story hard to find. ...
Rating:
Summary: A beautiful voice; a master of prose
Review: While Half in Love is Meloy's first book, I didn't read it till finishing Liars and Saints, her second. I loved L&S so much that I immediately bought Half in Love, even tho I'm not generally a fan of short stories. But these are wonderful. It's a collection of 15 stories set mostly in the West, although a few are set in the era of WWII in Europe.
Reading this author, you feel you've put yourself into the hands of a real Word Master, someone who can spin tales of heart-wrenching believability with almost lyrical prose. She deals with such grand themes as guilt, choice, opportunity, love, and loss. Meloy has been published in The New Yorker, Paris Review, and other journals to wide acclaim - and now, with the publication of Liars and Saints, her first novel, she should gain a richly deserved wider reading audience.
Rating:
Summary: A beautiful voice; a master of prose
Review: While Half in Love is Meloy's first book, I didn't read it till finishing Liars and Saints, her second. I loved L&S so much that I immediately bought Half in Love, even tho I'm not generally a fan of short stories. But these are wonderful. It's a collection of 15 stories set mostly in the West, although a few are set in the era of WWII in Europe.
Reading this author, you feel you've put yourself into the hands of a real Word Master, someone who can spin tales of heart-wrenching believability with almost lyrical prose. She deals with such grand themes as guilt, choice, opportunity, love, and loss. Meloy has been published in The New Yorker, Paris Review, and other journals to wide acclaim - and now, with the publication of Liars and Saints, her first novel, she should gain a richly deserved wider reading audience.
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