Book Review
Book title: 20th Century English Short Stories
Authors: J. Jefferson Farjeon, Laurence Lerner, Dorothy Parker, Allan Sillitoe, Laurie Colwin, Muriel Spark, Grace A. Ogot, John Wain, Martin Armstrong, Graham Greene, Peter Cowan and Roald Dahl.
Publisher/ year: First published by Evans 1979. Fifth impression 1999. Edited by Tina Pierce & Edward Cochrane.
Pages: 168
Summary:
This is a book of short stories, each one dealing a different matter and having different settings from United Kingdom, to U.S., Australia and Africa.
The topics are very attractive such as going into adulthood (Mr. Parker), tribal traditions (The Rain Came), different points of view about human relationships (The Valentine Generation) about the relationship with the land (The Tractor), telling secrets ( The Rivals), unfortunate coincidences (Enoch’s Two Letters), deception (Parson’s Pleasure), all of them have unexpected endings and catch your attention from the very first line to the last.
Opinion:
This collection of short stories is very interesting and entertaining. The stories have beautiful descriptions with lots of details. Some stories are for laughing and others make you think about the dealt topic.
On the whole it is very entertaining and instructive as it has a list of difficult words at the end of each story, it also has discussion exercises.
To sum up, I really have enjoyed the book and I will try to look for more stories from these authors.
Language:
The language varies in each story, adapting to the setting and the social status of the characters.
Every author uses his/her own style and has different ways of telling a story. Their language is clear, however, there are difficult words, specially when they are from specific fields (editing or furniture). However, each story has a list of difficult words at the end with definitions or explanations. Most of the vocabulary refers to concrete things, but in the Valentine Generation abstract words are dominating.
I make a special remark on The Last Tea, because it is full of slang as it deals about two young people, however, nowadays this slang can be a bit “old-fashioned” as it was published in 1939.
Referring to syntax it can be considered simple with normal sentence order however some stories have lots of subordinate phrases and long sentences, specially when describing situations with actions within them.
The most used rhetorical device is comparison (something resembling a moving bush, like the mutter from an aviary).
No comments:
Post a Comment