They Came Like Swallows (Paperback)

by William Maxwell (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
In the Morison house the important goes unsaid and indirection is the operative mode--conversation stops where it should start and key terms such as fear, pain, pregnancy, fail to be addressed. The younger son, an eight-year-old, passes his days deciphering adults' inaccessible discussions. "In this fashion they communicated with each other, out of knowledge and experience inaccessible to Bunny. By nods and silences. By a tired curve of his mother's mouth. By his father's measuring glance over the top of his spectacles." Bunny's older brother would rather escape to the outside world, and their father finds declaiming the day's headlines--World War I's end and the onslaught of Spanish Influenza--far preferable to engagement. Only Elizabeth, their mother, is capable of holding the family together. The fifth main character in They Came Like Swallows is the house itself. Maxwell expresses the boys' reactions through this labile, interior landscape. Bunny finds the dining room can be "braced and ready for excitement"; later his brother realizes "for the first time how still the house was, how full of waiting, ... tense and expectant." Though war never makes it to Illinois, the flu changes all. First Bunny is stricken, and once he recovers Elizabeth, pregnant, dies from it. In quiet, piercing prose, William Maxwell's second novel, originally published in 1937, evokes the greatest of losses and the terrors of imagination. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Review
In contrast to his first novel, the eccentric and artificial Bright Center of Heaven, this is a quiet and moving story of a middle western family, with two very genuine small children. Little external action - the story is more poignant through its complete naturalness and skillful portraiture. Light and sensitive touch, a deft use of contrast to bring out the tragedy in the situation of little people. Slight but worthwhile. (Kirkus Reviews)

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Product Details

• Paperback: 174 pages
• Publisher: The Harvill Press (December 28, 2000)
• ISBN-10: 1860468136
• ISBN-13: 978-1860468131
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Poignant, spare, taut, memorable, February 19, 2001

By	Schmerguls "schmerguls" (Sioux City, Ia USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This review is from: They Came Like Swallows (Paperback)

I learned of this book thru its being listed by Amazon as one of the ten best books of the 1930s. It is easy to read, but is sad and poignant. It speaks first from the viewpoint of the 8-year-old, then from the viewpoint of the 13 year old, finally the denouement: When I closed the book I realized that it would remain in my memory far longer than most novels. For those of you familiar with Josephine Johnson's Pulitzer-prize-winning novel, Now in November, am I wrong to think this book resonates the way that book has done (read by me over 40 years ago)?

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best from the invisible master, December 2, 2001

By	Lee Grossman (Oakland, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: They Came Like Swallows (Modern Library) (Hardcover)

William Maxwell, longtime fiction editor for the New Yorker, had a prolific writing career that spanned seven decades. His writing is spare and elegant, his characters genuine. This short(150 pages)novel deals with a family coping with the death of the mother. Each of the three chapters is written from the perspective of one of the survivors -- a preteen boy, a teenage boy, and their father. There is not a wasted or misplaced word in this book. Maxwell manages to capture the depth of experience of each of the characters in very few words. Maxwell should be ranked with the greatest of 20th century American authors; his relative obscurity is a mystery to me. This is my favorite of his novels.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A mother's love is tenderly remembered, October 4, 1997

By	[e-mail] - See all my reviews

This review is from: They Came Like Swallows (Modern Library) (Hardcover)

W.B. Yeats said: "And yet a woman's powerful character could keep a swallow to its first intent." Bunny is eight and Robert is thirteen the year their mother dies. In 174 brief pages, William Maxwell portrays a mother as seen through the eyes of her husband and two sons. To tender Bunny, his mother is the great protector; to adventurous Robert with one good leg, his mother is his champion who sees him as "normal" and able. To a loving husband, she is the reason his life has taken shape "by her wisdom and by her love." At the end of the book Robert's father asks, "You won't forget your mother, will you, Robert?" The reader won't forget this touching book either. I believe the author's mother died of influenza when he was a child so I wonder how much is perhaps a memoir.