The Southern Woman : New and Selected Fiction (Modern Library)

Rating:
Summary: Stories of delicacy and insight
Review: Elizabeth Spencer's short stories are elegantly written and filled with moments of delicacy and insight. "Ship of Fools," written many years ago, retains a freshness in its youthful protagonist's perceptions, while her best-known work, "Light in the Piazza," takes the reader into an ethereal, long-lost but bewitching Italian setting. As piercing as her insights into human dynamics is her ability to capture a peculiar quality of light or the dreamy interior world of her many characters. Spencer expertly juxtaposes passages of apparently random stream-of-consciousness with exchanges between men and women that illustrate the kinds of tangled relationships we all make and encounter in daily life. There's never just surface events taking place in Spencer's fiction; much is constantly going on beneath the surface, which for me generates the kind of depth found only in the very best fiction. I strongly recommend her work to readers looking for prose that can be read and re-read, savored and enjoyed, many times over.

Rating:
Summary: Not Only for Southerners
Review: I'm reading this now, savouring it, allowing one story a day. The stories are gems, polished without feeling workshopped, elegant without seeming traditional, classics yet not stodgy. Spencer's understanding of the nuances of class are superb, and her settings are evocative, rich and compelling. I've read little Southern fiction and spent even less time below the Mason-Dixon line, but these stories still seem real to me, important, touching and relevant. Highly recommended.