Willow Temple
New and Selected Stories
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A collection of stories by the former US poet laureate, “a first-rate work by an author whose control over the tools of his genre is impeccable” (Publishers Weekly).
A contemplative selection of twelve short stories from the celebrated author Donald Hall, Willow Temple focuses on the effects of divorce, adultery, and neglect. Hall’s stories are reminiscent of those of Alice Munro and William Maxwell in their mastery of form and their ability to trace the emotional fault lines connecting generations. “From Willow Temple” is the indelible story of a child’s witness of her mother’s adultery and the loss that underlies it. Three stories present David Bardo at crucial junctures of his life, beginning as a child drawn to his parents’ “cozy adult coven of drunks” and growing into a young man whose intense first affair undergirds a lifelong taste for ardor and betrayal. In this superbly perceptive collection, Hall gives memorable accounts of the passionate weight of lives.
“[Hall possesses] a consistent gift for delicate description.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Hall is comfortable with small stages—a tavern, a summer music camp, a farm, an artist’s studio, a junior college classroom, a cemetery, a bakery. But the quiet dramas that boil up in such places . . . are never small.” —Chicago Tribune
“Understated lyricism very much in what William Carlos Williams (whom Hall often resembles) called the ‘American grain.’ Moving and memorable.” —Kirkus Reviews
“A writer who attains the same high level of the game in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.” —The Boston Globe
“[Willow Temple] attests to Hall’s mastery as a storyteller, the prose lyrical and elegiac as he moving unfolds each character’s frailties.” —Ploughshares
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Celebrated poet and essayist Hall maintains the restrained, elegant style that established him as a master of his craft in the 1987 collection The Ideal Bakery, adding seven new stories to the five entries from the earlier collection. The title story sets the tone as a woman narrates her childhood memories of witnessing her mother's infidelity with a farm worker on their Ohio farm, an incident that led to her divorce from the girl's father, a distant classics teacher. "The First Woman" offers an equally painful take on the aftermath of love when a chronic womanizer reencounters his first conquest, who exposes the emptiness of his life after he inadvertently insults her during their reunion. New England figures prominently as a setting in several stories: "New England Primer" is a multilayered account of a man's generational ties to his family and upbringing, while "Widowers' Woods" is an evocative account of a man's memories of his time with his late wife, recalled as he walks through the woods near their former home. The only recurring character is David Bardo, who turns up in more than one entry most notably in "Roast Suckling Pig," as he embarks on a long-term, problematic affair with a duplicitous woman named Alma Trust. Hall can be a bit distant in his narrative approach, but his ability to maintain continuity while weaving together complex story lines remains superb, and his judicious use of irony is always effective. The consistently elegiac tone fixes the collection on a single emotional note, but this is a first-rate work by an author whose control over the tools of his genre is impeccable.
