Creek Walk and Other Stories [Hardcover]

Molly Giles (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1997

In this breathtaking and unforgettable collection of fourteen stories, Molly Giles introduces us to women struggling in the everyday, and in elegant, poignant, and achingly true prose, observes the human condition.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

All of the stories in Molly Giles's second collection of short stories, Creek Walk are united by a common theme: the struggle of women to become visible in a world of men. In "The Writers' Model," the narrator sits in a room full of male writers revealing the most intimate details of her life in hopes that the men will one day translate them into fully rounded women on the page; in the end, of course, they don't. In "War" the main character is so alienated from her ex-husband that she does not even name him, referring to him only as "he." In the collection's most harrowing story, "Talking to Strangers," the narrator is literally invisible: brutally murdered and mutilated by a young man on a mountaintop, she speaks from the grave.

Molly Giles is a skillful writer and the women in Creek Walk leap off the page fully dimensional, their faults and virtues observed and interpreted. The men, however, are mostly ciphers: at best, unconsciously oblivious to the women in their lives, at worst willfully misunderstanding them. Still, Ms. Giles's elegant prose and memorable women make this collection a worthwhile read.

From Publishers Weekly

Like Grace Paley, Giles writes exquisitely voice-driven stories that bring arch humor to the social and interior lives of her characters, who are mostly women. In her second collection of stories (her first, Rough Translations, won the Flannery O'Connor Award for short fiction and was nominated for the Pulitzer), Giles captures the exasperation of women-especially their frustration over not being fully known by others and, sometimes, even themselves. The short, hilarious "The Writers' Model" serves not only as a funny indictment of male obtuseness but also as an aesthetic statement about literature's ultimate inability to capture the fullness of character. The female narrator serves as an artist's model for a group of male writers who, pursuing the grail of realism, ask her questions. "The men were lonely and ignorant, but they were educable, I thought, and I took pride in helping them, however slightly, understand others." But she soon learns better: "The writers' questions began to tire me-that same one, week after week, about the underpants-and I decided to quit before I became what they saw." Giles distills all the irony of real life into remarkably clean and fluid prose. But unlike the plodding scribes of "The Writers' Model," she fully understands that her portraits, for all their clarity and definition, are not definitive. It's that comprehension of limits that, paradoxically, frees Giles to write aggressively. Because she knows she can't pin truths about character or society down permanently, she's not afraid to pin them down long enough for us to get a good, revealing look.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 144 pages
• Publisher: Papier-Mache Press (February 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1576010236
• ISBN-13: 978-1576010235
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,545,011 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars PAIR THIS WITH "BEAR AND HIS DAUGHTER", May 22, 2004

By 

Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Creek Walk and Other Stories (Paperback)

In William Golding's landmark The Lord Of The Flies we weep for "the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart." The heart's blackness is mourned again in two sharply drawn story collections. Despair is their leit motif.

Emotionally scarred, the characters in these tales are fragmented by substance abuse, by obdurate personal demons or both. Nonetheless, such unengaging personalities become compelling when presented by a pair of Pulitzer Prize nominees writing at top form. The child of a schizophrenic mother and unknown father, Robert Stone spent three years in an orphanage. Later, as a New Orleans census taker, he walked that city's back streets. With Bear And His Daughter, seven intense tales penned between 1969 and today, he depicts communal deadends and the dissolute souls trapped therein.

Begin with "Miserere." A widowed librarian's bitterness becomes a mission to have aborted fetuses receive the church's blessing. Another vignette explores the effects of childhood
violence: "The worst of it, Mackay says, was the absence of mercy. Once the punishment began, no amount of crying or pleading would stay the prefect's hand. Each blow followed upon the last, inexorably like the will of God. It was the will of God."

The title story sears as it traces the downward spiral of a visit by an alcoholic poet to his drug addicted emotionally deprived daughter. The author's chilling denouement rivals Euripidean tragedies.

Robert Stone's writing is edgy, scalpel keen. He probes, cuts, laying back the protective coverings of our human condition. He well knows life's underside.

Molly Giles also focuses on the estranged. In her second collection, Creek Walk and Other Stories, she champions passive women, those struggling to be heard.

There's no doubt of her theme: "I'm going to talk to you, you know," concludes the violated narrator in "Talking To Strangers." "Whether you're on the beach or in bed with a lover or laughing with friends - I'm going to talk to you all your life until you recognize me and know who I am."

Unsaid farewells heighten grief in "Creek Walk": "She was remembering her last morning with Lila, the morning when she should have said, 'I love you,' the morning when she should have said good-bye."

An imaginary television interviewer listens to the bourbon soaked rambling of a disoriented wife. Friends parry and pry, attempting to communicate.

Mrs. Ardis complains in "The Language Burier" that everything has been stolen from her. Colette, her French daughter-in-law has taken her husband's eyes, her son and, yes, even Mrs. Ardis' voice: "I would open my mouth to tell her something and she would pluck the words out of the air, one by one, and drop them into her apron pocket."

Metaphors are wielded adroitly - a turkey vulture hunched over on a fence waiting for his dinner; the slim, soft, bright blue jay feather, a gun barrel rape victim's only defense.
At times the women sound similar dissonant notes, yet their stories are often touching, sometimes terrifying, as they strive to connect, either rightly or wrongly.

Stone and Giles well merit the literary awards they continue to garner - for him a National Book Award, for her the Flannery O'Connor Award for short fiction. Their visions are bleak yet brilliant.

A surrealist, Belgian artist James Ensor often painted faces as skulls or grotesque masks, symbolizing spiritual decay. His work shocked, disturbed, but could not be forgotten. So it is with the stories of Stone and Giles.

- Gail Cooke

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An exquisite, compelling visit with the estranged., May 7, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Creek Walk and Other Stories (Paperback)

Giles' stories are subtle, bizarre, and believably human. Her versatility comes through beautifully in this collection, though the consistency of her literary ethos is striking. Deliciously comic and tragic.