Customer Reviews

And Both Shall Row: A Novella and Stories

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I was submerged this weekend, in the mystical town of Clayborne, lost in its lazy afterhaze, an Elysium gone bittersweet and very, very human. Yet these characters, for all their humanity, breathe of a golden place beyond the here and now. There are moments of light in this collection, when a character discovers that which gives joyous rapture to a moment, a hint of the divine which we all, even if secretly, aspire to. There are very few writers, in my forty odd years of publishing experience, who have so deeply moved me on first reading. Time will prove this volume to be little less than the foundation of some fantastic vision which we have only begun to glimpse. Lordan touches the bone of human experience without wallowing in the pathos. When a writer makes me wax poetic, there's something serious going on here. Watch this one.

Great, I picked a book for my trip to the Maine Woods, and this one fit the bill in every regard. I thought there were no authors around who wrote with such intricate regard for the human spirit--whose characters are alive, real. That's a model all writers strive for, but few achieve. Lordan's keen pursuit of the truth in the lives of her characters and tales of small town America leaves me nostalgic, a bit melancholy, but ultimately refreshed. Give us more!

The novella is what makes the book worth buying, given that it is the only part of this collection where one does not feel the need to cry out, "So what?" The stories attempt to mimic the setting and feel of Sherwood Anderson's <Winesburg, Ohio>, but come off feeling like a cheap perfume imitation. The characters leave one feeling as if the author intended to create conversations among beings possessed with artificial intelligence, a Frankensteinian Monster gone wrong. The exigency for this collection seems forced, as a result of too much writing and not enough depth

"And Both Shall Row" includes Lordan's award-nominated story "The Widow", a haunting and poetic love story of a farmer and his wife (the story is told largely through the eyes of the wife's ghost). In "The Widow" and subsequent stories, the craftsmanship and artistry of Lordan's weavings dissolve borders between reader and the printed word, and one is left in that Otherland of the great masters of fiction. Lordan's writing is mystical, passionate, and true. "And Both Shall Row" has shades of Faulkner and Chekhov, but the author is an original, and her work deserves great praise! Thanks, Amazon, for another great discovery!!

Here _it_ is again...a form of fiction that reminds us who the brilliant writers are. We used to kneel before them, but magic fades and becomes real, like the blue light of Claiborne and its tarnished characters parading through the set of what we had hoped would be something as good as it is..

I would have to agree with the New York Times: "this is one of America's finest new writers." Lordan's collection, "And Both Shall Row", contains stories which are haunting works of art, slices of the everyday immortalized. "The Widow", the first story, is one of the finest tales I've read in a long time. The ghost of the farmer's wife weeps, or attempts to, at the end of a reflective collage centering on the magic of her husband's love--an art of movement, not of this world. The poetic and timeless voice of this story puts readers into the wave of something mystical. Unfortunately, I am late in discovering this new American treasure.

Beth Lordan's star is just rising on the national front. For years I've enjoyed her stories, wondering why doesn't everyone know about this writer?! "And Both Shall Row" deserves the Pulitzer. Its melancholy, sweet remembrance of two sisters is the finest story I've read this year.

I have not encountered such fine writing in this genre for many years--the literary novel is not dead! "And Both Shall Row" is not only a great novella, a touching story of two sisters, but the collection of finely wrought stories included with it are timeless. I have recommended this book to my writing seminar and most of all to friends. Great fiction forces us to exam life in its sometimes awesome splendor. I've followed Beth Lordan's stories in "The Atlantic" for many years and now am ecstatic that she's published this long-awaited collection. When is her next work coming out?!!

My new age lit. prof. asked us to choose from three modern authors: I found this one, and boy was I surprised to learn that the novella is a form many people are not familiar with--Beth Lordan has helped revived that form for Fiction 3102. Two students in our class are now writing novellas after our week's study of "Both Shall Row".

Conceptual writing is best left to screenplays. So here is the same scene problem, oh I mean problem seen time and time again..let the writers write the books and the storytellers like Eggers cross over and do the deed.