10 stories

In this collection of short stories, dreamy young women struggle to project their private luminescence onto the prosaic world.

When I read Derek Hudson's Classic English Short Stories, 1930-1955, I was startled to discover an assortment of good authors about whom I had never heard: Elizabeth Bowen, Nigel Kneale, Frances Towers.

Unfortunately, Derek Hudson apparently did an excellent job choosing the best story from each author, because their other work has been disappointing. I couldn't finish Bowen's The Last September or Kneale's Tomato Cain, and my successful completion of Towers' Tea with Mr Rochester took a great deal of grim perseverance. Towers does very fine secondary characters, and her writing is subtle and sharp -- and then a character will open his or her mouth, and the entire story falls apart. I don't think I have ever encountered such wooden, clunky, expository, heavy-handed, awful dialogue from an author who can, otherwise, write very well. The dialogue ruins nearly every story here; "The Golden Rose" is the only successful combination of exquisite observation and human-sounding conversations. Which is a pity -- if only you could render all of Towers' characters mute, her stories would be excellent. ( )

Book of short stories which have a definite "feel" to them....unrequited love, the coming together of two like minded individuals; getting a handle on the "real" meaning of stuff when surrounded by the shallow and the phony....and all set in slightly magical places.....beautiful old houses, the wondrous natural world.
"The passing reflexions of Charlotte in red, Brenda in green made a faint shimmer on the walls as they drifted about, as if a herbaceous border were reflected momentarily in water."
Rather lovely writing. ( )

When I first pick up this book I thought this was a novella. So it took a minute to figure out that it was short stories. I general don’t like reading short story, I have a tenancy to not finish them. This one I did finish and it is a gem.
My favorite stories were Tea with Mr. Rochester, The Little Willow and Strings in Hollow Shells. Some of the stories had a magical and dream quality, some were endearing and other just a bit dramatic and silly. What I enjoy about her stories is the setting of the scene. They seem just as much as a character as the characters themselves. Like the discerption of the Hartwell House in Rose in the Picture, or the smoky light to highlight the character in The Chosen and the Rejected. It seems import to the writer that the scene was just as important as the characters. It is too bad this was the only book published by Frances Towers. It would have been nice to see how she would have written a novel. So I would say give it a try even if you are not a big fan of short stories.

( )

This collection of short stories was wonderful, each like drinking a small glass of port. To quote the publisher Frances Towers "has the rare ability of the fine writer to recreate things to her own vision; so that, for a while after reading her stories, the world seems newly-minted and iridescent, charged with magical possibilities, an unfamiliar place, a different place to what it was before you read Frances Towers." If you like Jane Austen you'll love this book. ( )