The Courts of Love: Stories [Paperback]

Ellen Gilchrist (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1997

This celebrated collection opens with "Nora Jane and Company, " featuring one of the most popular characters in the Gilchrist galaxy. The nine stories that follow explore the hazards of recapturing and reviving old affairs. Featuring both new and familiar Gilchrist characters, all of these stories shed brilliant new light on the oldest emotion.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The short stories in the first half of this collection feature Nora Jane Whittington, one of Ellen Gilchrist's familiar characters, and through Nora Jane and her family and friends, Gilchrist explores the complex balancing of relationships. The stories in the second half have many varying points of view--including a non-human one, that of a bear cub. These thoughtful tales, alive with vivid description, revolve around the tensions between the mind and the body, and between what is desired and what is achievable. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

The novella that occupies more than half of this satisfying volume displays many of Gilchrist's characteristics: the reappearance of characters encountered in previous works; frequent foreshadowing and flashbacks; a mix of the mundane and the miraculous; and copious literary and scientific references?all employed in the service of an eventful story. "Nora Jane and Company" reprises the eponymous character whom we last saw giving birth to twins, in Light Can Be Both Wave and Particle. Here, the twins are now 10; Nora Jane is 29 and happily married to Freddy Harwood. As usual, all the players in a sizable cast of characters are larger than life: they live spontaneously, even recklessly; they have lots of money and spend it freely and frivolously; they are ruled by passionate emotions fueled by brilliant insights and sudden visions. In the course of the novella, Nora Jane, Freddy and the twins' godfather, journalist and film critic Neiman Gluuk, experience a terrorist assassination of one of their friends; enroll at Berkeley for graduate studies; survive an emergency in the California wilderness; and participate in a minor miracle that employs the long arm of coincidence and a cloak worn by the spirit of Leonardo da Vinci. Gilchrist's matter-of-fact prose carries a gloss of melodrama, and her characters are given to pontificating (about such matters as the fatwa against Salman Rushdie), didactic speeches (about the makeup of the universe, etc.) and outlandish behavior. Nine additional stories make up the second section. One of them centers on Nora Jane as a "very special, charismatic" child (Gilchrist is particularly good with children's and teenagers' dialogue), and all are imbued with wry humor, nostalgia for lost innocence and gratitude for the power of memory to enrich life. Gilchrist's hand is sure, her vision keen and sometimes antic, and the world she has created in 12 previous books is expanded and enhanced by these luminous tales.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Back Bay Books; 1st Back Bay Ppbk Ed. 1997 edition (September 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316317713
• ISBN-13: 978-0316317719
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,984,839 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Love, Knowledge, And Beauty Redeem, June 16, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Courts of Love: Stories (Paperback)

In "The Courts of Love", Ms. Gilchrist transports us to a world where beauty, love and knowledge are the guiding tenets of existence. The characters throughout the stories are whacky to the max, but insanely likable for just this reason--they marvel at the wonder and beauty that life offers, clumsily reach for meaningful connections with others, and seek answers to life's larger questions.

The writing flows and characters emerge full-blown, their emotions so finely and wisely explored that you just want to sit down with Ms. Gilchrist and have a good talk; you know she knows a lot.

I've been a big fan of Ms. Gilchrist since I read, "Drunk With Love" in college more than 10 years ago and have devoured nearly every one of her novels and collections of short stories(some not as perfect as this)since. I'd love to get as many of you out there hooked on her work as possible; it's literature at it's best--transforming!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent exploration of ordinary daily lives, January 12, 1998

By 

Constant Weeder "batttman" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Courts of Love: Stories (Hardcover)

In this mixed collection, Gilchrist shows her versatility by changing the points of view to a woman, a man, a 7-year old girl, a bear, and even a wounded dog. The stories are life affirming, in the sense that the protagonists are "good people" who sometimes do a little praying and say Amen. The situations are not usually exciting, though there is one violent death. The characters explore loss, new relationships, changes of direction in their lives, and are not afraid to reach out and grasp opportunities. This is work by an author who is very sure of her medium and her skill. I found it thought-provoking and greatly interesting.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars several notches down from her best work, March 3, 2006

By 

grrlpup (Portland, Oregon, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Courts of Love: Stories (Hardcover)

Some of these stories tap into the heated emotion and love of beauty that fill up Gilchrist's previous book of stories, Age of Miracles, and novels like Starcarbon and The Anna Papers. But though many of the elements seem the same-- impassioned speeches about science, recurrent characters who meet life with full-force emotion-- these stories are simply not quite as good. Nora Jane doesn't spring off the page as Rhoda Manning does, and her ten-year-old twins never come to life. When they talk, it's like they're parroting someone.

I'm ambivalent about the book, because it does have a lot of the old Gilchrist energy. But in the story where a character meets Leonardo da Vinci for an afternoon, for example, I felt caught up in the author's fantasy life instead of being in the hands of a master artist. The story was one long, "yeah... wouldn't it be great if Leonardo really came back and we took him to see an electron microscope?" The fantasy energy isn't tempered with complexity or storytelling or far-reaching implications.

I agree with the other reviewer that it was a horrible shock to be reading along about Nora Jane and suddenly find the most cartoonish, stereotyped drivel about Arabs and Muslims. I was embarrassed for the author; a writer who can observe carefully and truly should have known better.

I enjoyed some of the shorter pieces in the second half of the book, about the lifelong regret and longing for the one you "should have married," and the all-or-nothing drama of being a teenager who was passed over for cheerleading. However, unless you're reading all of Gilchrist, pass over this one.