Dislocations (Hardcover)

by Janette Turner Hospital (Author) "HIS HIGHNESS IS HERE, of course..." (more)
Key Phrases: tabla player, Patrick Murphy, Peter Williamson, Ada Watts (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
"In this aptly titled gathering, we experience the uprootedness of people whose lives are changed by circumstances over which they have no control," remarked PW , calling Hospital's short-story debut "richly diverse."
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Library Journal
Hospital, author of three novels, here presents 17 stories variously set in Australia, where she was born, and in India, Canada, and New York, where she has lived. In "Happy Diwali" a group of emigre Indians wear quilted eiderdown over their delicate Kashmiri silk to guard against the fierce Canadian winter. They cover themselves with outer garments of necessity and assimilation, keeping their own culture underneath. In "After Long Absence" the narrator tells us, "I know about words . . . about the depth charges they carry." Returning to her childhood home in Australia, beset by old, unresolved conflicts, she is acutely aware of these depth charges. Like all of us, Hospital's characters are dislocated by events in the past that intrude and warp the present. Thoughtful stories, written with grace and a generous spirit.Marcia Tager, Tenafly, N.J.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Company (January 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805032967
• ISBN-13: 978-0805032963
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars "The Space Between Us All", August 17, 2005

By	H. F. Corbin "Foster Corbin" (ATLANTA, GA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Dislocations: Stories (Norton Paperback Fiction) (Paperback)

The title of this first collection of short stories (1986) by Janette Turner Hospital says it all. These characters are dislocated by space, time, religion, education, unforeseen events, even death. And though they may travel to the four corners of the earth, whether it is India, Canada, the United States or Australia, they never really ever leave their homeland. When left unattended, their thoughts return there.

Most of these stories have hard sayings. A burn victim, formerly a pretty young girl ("Golden Girl") must face a reconstructed future with a reconstructed face. A dying woman ("The Dark Wood") who two days ago learned of her death sentence longs to putter in her tomatoes. A friend whom the narrator has just left is killed by an automobile in "Some Have Called Thee Mighty and Dreadful" leaving the narrator overcome with guilt: "If I had invited them back to our house. If I had only tilted time a few minutes to one side or the other. This is shock. Of course I am not responsible. Life is random, brutally indifferent." In "After Long Absence" a woman returns to Brisbane and her family whose fundamentalist religion she has long since left behind. Her teetotaler father, so as not to embarrass her in front of her friends in a university lounge, "takes polite sips" of white wine. She, on the other hand, is unwilling to select a passage and read from the Bible as is the custom for visitors to do in her parents' home at the evening meal. "It cannot be a concession anywhere near as great as my father's two sips of wine. . . Yet I canot do it. 'I am sorry,' I say quietly, hating myself. . . Outside I hug the mango tree and weep for the kind of holy innocence that can inflict appalling damage; and because it is clear that they, the theologically rigid, are more forgiving than I am."

As always, Ms. Hospital gets right to the heart of the matter as well as the hearts of her readers.