Featuring an introduction by the author, this timeless collection chronicles the lives of contemporary people as they confront our perplexed society.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Readers of Bobbie Ann Mason looking for something new won't find it in Midnight Magic; this collection of 17 stories culled from two previous collections, Shiloh and Other Stories and Love Life, is more likely to satisfy fans who can be content with a compendium of greatest hits. Since her debut in the early '80s, Mason has been part of a group of writers from the new South--authors who, though they share the same geography with old masters like William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor, bring an entirely different perspective to it. Gone are the pages-long parenthetical paragraphs of Faulkner; gone are O'Connor's acute renderings of Southern psychology. Mason's characters wouldn't recognize psychology if it rose up and bit them on the keister. This is a world of shopping malls, daytime TV, and unsteady employment, an ethos in which not-so-genteel poverty extends to the imagination as well as the bank account. Brand names and the titles of television shows serve as mile-markers in these stories, and Mason's (often) unemployed heroes and big-haired heroines are only vaguely aware of living lives of quiet desperation. Mason draws these portraits of real life with precision; her accretion of details work hard to bring the reader so deeply into the picture that you can see the crumbs of Wonderbread on the Formica countertops and smell the stale Old Milwaukee on the Sunday morning after Saturday night. Yet as precise and colorful as Mason's images are, in the end they are much like photographs--remarkable in the clarity of what they show, yet only hinting at what goes on in the hearts and minds inside the characters they portray.
From Kirkus Reviews
``The mystery of writing,'' Mason (Feather Crowns, 1993, etc.) notes in the Introduction to this hefty compilation of her short fiction, ``is much like diving into the darkness in the middle of the night. It's both dangerous and fraught with possibility.'' Repeatedly, Mason's characters, products of the uncertain New South of the 1970s and `80s, either gather up their courage to plunge into change or flee it. In ``Bumblebees,'' for instance, two women largely cut off from the world by grief make a tentative and profoundly moving (if understated) attempt to escape from its confines. By contrast, in ``Memphis,'' a woman increasingly isolated from her family, unable to act, reflects that most of those around her were ``being pulled along by thoughtless impulses and notions, as if their lives were no more than a load of freight hurtling along on the interstate.'' This selection, drawn from Masons two volumes of short fiction (Love Life, 1989; Shiloh and Other Stories, 1982) reminds one of the quiet virtues of her work: her wry, exact portrait of a South caught somewhere between tradition and a bland modern culture of interstates and shopping malls, and her ability to suggest, in the guarded speech of her characters, a world of confusion and hope. Subtle, resonant work. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
And beautiful Kentucky too,
By Manola Sommerfeld (California) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Midnight Magic (Hardcover)
This is a wonderful compilation of short stories, many of which i had already read in Shiloh. The common thread that i found is that the characters in these stories mean well, but are slightly clueless in this business of life. Here you have Leroy, whose life is disintegrating in front of his eyes, or Sam, who looks back at his long life not understanding how some things happened, or Nancy, wondering how she ended up so far away from home. But there's something very endearing about these people, in most cases illiterate, living in the periphery of middle class. A very enjoyable read.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
You can take them out of the farm but....,
By
This review is from: Midnight Magic: Selected Stories of Bobbie Ann Mason (Paperback)
The stories are all completely separate but linked by taking place in southwest Kentucky in the 1970's. An older generation is shocked by a younger generation's extra-marital sex and use of alcohol. Religion is an issue, but one of social observance rather than belief. The question is whether or not to spend Sunday morning in church rather whether to believe or not believe. Even a character who is a minister seems to have chosen his trade rather as he might have chosen any other.
The characters are poor by American standards. (From an international perspective American poverty has something of the Petit Trianon about it). They are one or two generations removed from farming The jobs they hold seldom interest them and they do not have meaningful careers. Mason has affinities to the school of writing exemplified by Raymond Carver, Richard Ford, Richard Russo and Russell Banks, sometimes called "dirty realism." Some of these other writers are minimalists, but Mason often indulges in lyrical description and likes to set the scene and illustrate her characters' tastes and social standing by listing their possessions.. I realized I had read most of the stories before, in the New Yorker or Atlantic, but is was a delight to find them again.
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
BAM's Greatest Hits (with commentary),
By Bruce A. (Sunny Southern California) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Midnight Magic: Selected Stories of Bobbie Ann Mason (Paperback)
Not only are the best stories from "Shiloh and Other Stories" here, but some excellent pieces from another volume as well. Even the cover of this book is great, as it illuminates the highly discussed snaking sidewalk in "Shiloh." The commentaries on the stories are gems as well, letting you inside the writer's mind. Wonderful book!
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