Two volumes of incredibly powerful, searing writing, the theme throughout being the tragedy of What Life Does ...to the beautiful baby, the open-minded child, the determined young family... Olsen came from immigrant stock herself, worked menial jobs and was a union activist in early 20th century USA.
"Tell me a Riddle" features four short stories: in one, a mother laments unspecified problems in her teenage daughter's life, but recalls how Life (poor, absent, working mother, a spell in the 'care' system etc) propelled the lovely child into suffering. A drunken sailor visits family while on shore leave; a couple of adolescent female pals- one white, one black - find their friendship crumbles as they enter Junior High and its prejudices; and an elderly immigrant woman faces terminal illness...
"Yonnondio" is unfinished (but that in no way detracts- the narrative suffices). It called to mind "Grapes of Wrath" (Steinbeck), "The Dollmaker" (Arnow) and "The Jungle" (Sinclair.) Written in a stream of consciousness manner, the account follows a poor working family from a mining village - where death is a regular occurence - to the idyll to farm life. Life is good - but unprofitable, and they find themselves driven back to the city and the stinking hell of the meat packing industry...
Utterly brilliant writing.which deserves to be much better known. ( )

I read the edition which contains both the four short stories of Tell Me a Riddle and the unfinished novel Yonnondio, which Olsen started in the 1930s at the age of 19 and pieced together in 1974.

This is another in an ever increasing number of beautiful and grim works I've read this year, and it makes me very sad that this is the sum total of Olsen's published fiction. She blends the endless grind of depression era living -- the struggle for human dignity -- with intense sympathy, intimacy and moments of beauty and joy.

That said, none of the stories is "happy", so if that's something you need in your reading matter you would be disappointed.

One of my favourite moments of beauty:

"On her way home -- where she will be beaten for having been gone, for having been born, for having been born crippled and epileptic, for being one more mouth to feed and because out of sheer nervousness and exhaustion there is a need for someone to beat -- Erina no longer feels heat or thirst or the gnawing in her belly. On a tin-can roof of one of the shacks someone has set a pan of shining water where cat and dog cannot reach it, and a bird is bathing itself, fluttering its wings in delight. In its tiny spray that the sun rainbows, Erina stands motionless, feeling in herself the shining, the fluttering happiness. The thigh-high weeds are powdered white with dust. When the bird is done, she climbs to drink of the water in which feathers float, takes and holds one to dry in the furnace air, turns and smooths it over and over against her bruised cheek. The vast winds of fit may blow any minute; the shameful trembling and great darkness begin, but she walks now in the fluttering shining and the peace." ( )