Lone Pilgrim [Paperback]

Laurie Colwin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1982

This collection of stories about love and privacy is serious , funny, tender, and alive with the elegance and spirit that characterize Laurie Colwin's work. In these stories, the reader moves among young men and women: pianists, historians, book illustrators, architects; women who are composed and inimitably sassy; and men who are magnetic, adventurous in love, or fiendishly elusive. They are people who are experiencing, often for the first time, the starting, enriching, and maddening complications of adult life.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Miss Colwin writes with such sunny skill, and such tireless enthusiasm..." -- -- Joyce Carol Oates, New York Times Book Review --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

Laurie Colwin is the author of five novels: Happy All the Time, Family Happiness, Goodbye Without Leaving, Shine On, Bright and Dangerous Object, and A Big Storm Knocked It Over; three collections of short stories: Passion and Affect, Another Marvelous Thing, and The Lone Pilgrim; and two collections of essays: Home Cooking and More Home Cooking. She died in 1992. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Pocket (September 1, 1982)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671434896
• ISBN-13: 978-0671434892
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,403,771 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A pleasure to read, July 25, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Lone Pilgrim (Paperback)

I am a long-time Laurie Colwin fan and I was glad to see that this book of short stories - which I wasn't familiar with - was re-released. It was interesing to find many of the same themes from other Colwin books (extra-marital affairs, a sometimes obsessive focus on domestic comfort) re-appear in these stories and to find some new themes as well. Colwin had a unique gift for writing mainly happy, funny stories about quirky, attractive people with interesting jobs. Many of the stories have a fable-like quality. They could be precious but they're not. Narrators usually lead charmed lives and you could resent them, but instead you root for them.

These stories seem to have been written in the early part of Colwin's career. The final story "Family Happiness" appears to be the first chapter of the novel of the same name. What's interesting about this collection is that it includes a few stories that are a bit darker or more experimental in feeling than much of Colwin's other work. One story is about a famous poet's unwelcome attention to a young serious-minded girl in a college town. (He watches her as she grows up, writes poems about her, and is generally obsessed with the girl.) The narrator of another hilarious story is a young wife keeping a secret from her college professor husband. The secret is that she is a pothead who has been continuously stoned from the moment thay met - an unusual heroine for Colwin, but she pulls it off!

My favorite Colwin book is still "Happy All The Time" but these stories were a pleasure to read. The enjoyment I get from reading her stuff is similar to the enjoyment I get from Jane Austen. If that's the kind of thing you like, I highly recommend "The Lone Pilgrim."

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Keeping Colwin's pilot light alive!, November 5, 2001

By 

L Goodman-Malamuth "Leslie Goodman-Malamuth" (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Lone Pilgrim (Paperback)

It is a joy to see all of Laurie Colwin's books reissued to delight her previous fans and engage new readers. My hardcover copy of "The Lone Pilgrim" from 1981 has my then-name written on the flyleaf. I devoured the stories, carried the book carefully across the country, and it sits with the following volume "Family Happiness" and her other books, including a British edition of "Passion and Affect" that I tracked down used, pre-Internet, pre-Amazon.com.

Laurie Colwin's works hold up amazingly well, at least in my opinion. It would be easy to despise her well-heeled, comfortable characters if they had been wrought by less skillful hands. She truly is America's own Jane Austen.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I just discovered her..., December 10, 2005

By 

Ginny "eatsbooksforlunch" (Orcas Island, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Lone Pilgrim (Paperback)

I just discovered Lori Colwin and what a delight! I was so sad to hear that she had passed away in 1992. I thoroughly enjoyed "The Lone Pilgrim". Ms. Colwin has a wonderful way with words and creates characters that are so real and recognizable, filled with flaws and foibles that make them charmingly (and sometimes maddeningly) human.

'I've rarely read a modern short story writer who has such an ability to turn a phrase. Her stories seem to be taken straight from life and yet she enhances life in such a way that one can laugh at it while feeling its poignancy. I can't wait to read all of her work.