Customer Reviews

The Courts of Love: Stories

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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!

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.

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.

I am always searching for a new "find" - authors-wise - and Gilchrist is it! I love her clear writing style. I feel like I am the other half of a conversation with her - with funny remarks like "The rest is private" when she is describing an intimate moment between two characters. Her stories are "by the way" stories that stay with you after you put the book away. I can't wait to read more of her stuff.

In The Courts of Love, Gilchrist concentrates primarilyon Nora Jane, a worthy successor to Gilchrist's (and my) favortieprotagonist, Rhoda Manning. This collection of short storiesis both timely and entertaining. Treat yourself, then goexplore all of Gilchrist's works - she is phenomenal andonly gets better through the years

I was enjoying this book a lot--Gilchrist is a fine writer--and then suddenly, in the chapter titled "On the Problem of Turbulence" (pages 52-83 in the hardcover edition) the author launches into a session of gratuitous bashing of Arabs and Moslems. I am a trained reader, and I reread this section several times looking for irony or some other reason for this, to me, offensive section, and I could find no explanation for it. It ruined the book for me. I wonder what the author was thinking?