Sunday, August 24, 2008
My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead - Great Love Stories from Chekhov to Munro
My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead is a book of short stories on love. But these are not the fairy tales you grew up with where everything ends “happily ever after”. As the editor of this book, Jeffrey Eugenides, explains, “I started to realize that not only the love stories that I liked, but actually the love stories that everybody liked, had a certain bittersweet quality to them. The stories in this collection are by no means tragic, but in order to even get to a measure of happiness, the characters usually have to go through a lot of difficulty,“ Don’t we all! (?)
The title of the book comes from a Latin poet (the first poet to ever write about his personal love stories!) named Catullus who was in love with a girl with a pet sparrow which captured all the girl’s attention and time so that he could not have her attention. When the sparrow died, instead of her attention being turned to Catullus, she was so stricken with grief that she still could not give him any attention. Poor guy… a lose/ lose situation. But again, love is not always easy. After reading these short stories I am tempted to write one myself…except for the fact that in doing so I would lose all my secrets, not something worth doing. I’d much rather read the secrets of others! For more information on this book I suggest reading this article on National Public Radio‘s website.
