In an overcrowded hospital in war-torn Bosnia, a Muslim soldier and a young Serbian woman?one crippled, the other blind?find solace in each other in ?Pavilion 24.? In small-town Ontario, a father and daughter relive the summer when a mysterious, ethereal girl entered their lives and a brutal assault changed everything. In an apartment peopled with an eclectic mix of bohemian ex-patriots, a man pursues a young suicidal waif at the height of the sexual revolution in 1970s Paris. So this is love. This is squalor. From Paris to Italy to Bosnia to rural Ontario, these nine stories take the reader on a journey of love, sex, violence and the politics of desire. Here, memory and longing serve as a catalyst to truth and identity, and offer respite from a world gone achingly numb. Madly romantic, subtly subversive and utterly accomplished, Gilbert Reid?s collection is about love in all of its forms?sometimes sad, sometimes harsh, sometimes perverse, but always, always beautiful.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
This debut collection (first released in Canada in 2004) examines love's many intricacies and, given the stories that follow, begins fittingly with pain—an amputation performed sans anesthetic. Reid is at his best when his subject matter is dire: two abandoned hospital patients in war-shattered Bosnia—one a vengeful Muslim soldier, the other a blind Serbian woman—come to depend on each other in "Pavilion 24"; a young woman confronts a terrible memory in the tender, sweet and ominous "Soon We Will Be Blind"; a war photographer saves a life in the face of nearly a million deaths in "Hey, Mister!" Throughout, Reid evokes an assortment of settings ("Somewhere the rhythmic crescendo of artillery overtook the roar of the motor. It was subliminal—the distant sound of killing") and shifts easily among a wide array of characters. However, Reid misfires a few times, notably with the half-baked title story and "After the Rain," which reads like an exercise in Hemingway mimicry. But the best of these stories are excellent and illuminate the tortured relationship between love and loss. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
Oh, the multifarious catacombs of love--how they twist and twine the heart. Canadian Reid sets his short stories in faraway places--Italy, Paris, Yugoslavia, Rome, to name a few--while his characters inhabit various states of swoon, adoration, hatred, or despair. In one, a Muslim and a Serbian grudgingly comfort each other's ailing bodies in an infirmary far away from the war. In "Lollipop," a young woman is admired as she dances, then skinny dips in the dark night sea, her face "cut in half, right down the middle" in a car accident. Reid's ripe attention to the shadow-play of dark and light, along with his astute, Kundera-like descriptions of women, permeate his often playful prose. "She has good legs--thin, well-bred upper-class Italian legs," and (in tribute, perhaps, to Nabokov) "Nikki is my idol, my totem, my fetish, my friend." His dialogue is clean and taut, and his story lines are an intriguing weave of memory and place, reminding us love is ever-changing. Emily Cook
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Startling, haunted, and undeniably witty,
By
This review is from: So This Is Love: Lollipop and Other Stories (Hardcover)
I am not a short story reader. I read ravenously and thus prefer to consume entire novels as they seem to pass so quickly, but SO THIS IS LOVE, made me fall in love with short stories. Each one is so unique, and the prose so beautifully written, you can't help but want to stay in one of Reid's many worlds forever. I could go on for paragraphs abou thow much I love this collection, instead I prefer to say one thing--you will not regret purchasing, borrowing, or reading this collection, just get your hands on it. It's too exquisite not to have on your shelf.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
wide look at love, but not from a romance novel's perspective,
This review is from: So This Is Love: Lollipop and Other Stories (Hardcover)
This nine story collection provides a wide look at love, but not from a romance novel's perspective. Each tale is interesting, but the best are those involving love that comes out of the ashes of hatred and misery like the haunting first story "Pavilion 24", which the audience will read twice and stop for the night because it is haunting. War plays a matchmaking role in several of the contributions as Gilbert Reid makes the case that out of the seeds of dissension and strife love can still blossom (think Romeo and Juliet), but loss can also follow. A couple of the tales turn too literary for this compilation; this makes them seem like they do not belong as the sense of a wretched place is lacking though ironically they are well written. However, for the most part readers will peruse several times these fascinating tales of love out of the ruins of hate and despair even when there is no happily ever after.
Harriet Klausner
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