The House on Belle Isle (Shannon Ravenel Books) [Hardcover]

Carrie Brown (Author)

Book Description

Series: Shannon Ravenel Books | Publication Date: March 15, 2002

Carrie Brown's three novels-Rose's Garden, Lamb in Love, and The Hatbox Baby-have established her as a writer who works from curiosity, skillful research, and a vivid imagination. Her reviewers have praised her "rich characterizations" (The Dallas Morning News) and her "profound, gentle insights."(The Orlando Sentinel) This first book of stories confirms those attributes seven times over.

The generosity of Brown's storytelling style has never been more in evidence. Each of these seven stories presents a different authentic world-a divorcTe's spacious rent-controlled NYC apartment, a widow's Maryland neighborhood, horseback-riding camp for girls in England, a residential seaside resort in Rhode Island, a remote mountain village in Spain, a tidewater Virginia inn that flourished in the post-Civil War era, and, in the wonderful title story, a most unusual mortuary in Maine. Each one is so vividly created and populated that the experiences for the reader are remarkably novelistic. We've been taken inside seven very private places by a guide whose gentle insights are indeed profound.

THE HOUSE ON BELLE ISLE will cement Carrie Brown's growing reputation as a fiction writer of deep resources and unlimited powers of imagination.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This first collection of seven stories from the author of The Hatbox Baby is a gentle journey through wistful memories, suffused with subdued longing. Brown places her characters in soft, twilight settings a quiet Rhode Island beach town, a windy cliff in Maine, a Spanish mountain village, the muddy English countryside from which they reflect upon the past and tepidly contemplate the future. In the title story, a grandfather feels the need to tell his granddaughter the story of his own grandmother, an undertaker who faced scandal and death with equanimity, but was undone by a severed hand. His wish is that "no one will be forgotten. No one will be left in the dark." Other characters in this collection, including two adolescent protagonists, have a similar sense of impending loss. In "Friend to Women," Claire, who suffers from heart arrhythmia, returns to the beach of her childhood and recollects both a teenage encounter with a middle-aged senator and the ardent but unwanted advances of one of her husband's colleagues; she understands for the first time how they have determined the contours of her life. The elongated structure of these stories works best in "The Correspondent." Lettie, by now familiar as one of Brown's tiny and self-doubting heroines, considers the unlikely friendship that developed through correspondence between her Manhattanite daughter and an impoverished Southern girl. The narrative unwinds to reveal timid growth and understated accomplishment, but the foundations of the story and its romantic prose are solid. Brown's prose is fluid and graceful and, despite the occasional use of romantic clich‚, it eschews melodrama and unrealistic conclusions. These stories lack the economy usually associated with the form but, for this reason, they will probably appeal to readers who enjoyed Brown's novels.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This sweet collection of stories by Virginia native Brown (The Hatbox Baby, Rose's Garden) offers intimate glimpses into the various lives and landscapes being portrayed. The title story offers a slightly gruesome account of a remote Maine location where Louis's grandmother, Louise, found her calling as an undertaker. Louis cautiously decides to pass on his grandmother's story to his visiting schoolteacher granddaughter. In "Friend to Women," 51-year-old Claire convinces her husband to rent a house by the coast for a year, and the whole of the story recounts their drive to see the house for the first time as they move. In all the stories, there is an urgent poignancy in the telling, and the characters' emotional lives are laid bare to the reader. Fans of her novels will not be disappointed. Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., VA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: A Shannon Ravenel Book; 1 edition (March 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 156512300X
• ISBN-13: 978-1565123007
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,641,970 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant stories, June 5, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The House on Belle Isle (Shannon Ravenel Books) (Hardcover)

Carrie Brown's three novels ("Rose's Garden," "Lamb in Love," and "The Hatbox Baby") are captivating and accomplished, and I loved them all, but "The House on Belle Isle" now places her in the ranks of Alice Munro and Peter Taylor and William Trevor as one of the premier contemporary short story writers. Yes, these stories are that good. They are wise, illuminating, sad, gorgeous, and beautifully crafted. Since I haven't seen any of Carrie Brown's books on bestseller lists, you have the chance to discover, as I did, a tremendously rewarding and under-appreciated writer.