From Kirkus Reviews
A short little trip into a half-comfortable kind of writerly nostalgia in three stories (declares an Author's Note) that ``reflect the experiences of the author at the ages of twenty, ten, and thirteen.'' Bending his hand again to scenes of WW II, Styron visits (``Love Day'') a Marine Division in the Pacific, offering in brief form a standard cast of characters from Many-a-Movie: the tough but just-a-guy commander; the platoon leader who wants to be a writer; the narrator who has secret home-thoughts and, through them, learns something about meaning and fear. Throughout, the rickety narrative is made forgivable--barely--by the pleasures of the period detail. ``Shadrach,'' set in 1935, is more complex--and perhaps overall less convincing, though even more painstaking in its (in this case) recalling of rural Depression-era details. In it, a middle-class boy admits to his envy of the slovenly but life-rich existence of a family of fallen white trash (the Dabneys), to whom a 99-year-old ex-slave returns to die. Finally, set in 1938, amid rumblings of approaching war, ``A Tidewater Morning'' shows a boy rebelling against one kind of tyranny (his mean and niggardly paper-route boss) while his mother (once a classical singer) dies horribly of the inescapable tyranny of cancer and his father crumbles gradually through weakness and pity. Styronic plusses and minuses: the displeasures of the overly- written-about and revisited, and of the rickety narrative shortcut (``This is a farce! We didn't come out here these thousands of miles to sit around that stinking little island and watch our hands and feet rot off. We were trained to kill Japs, for Christ's sake!''); and, meanwhile, the pleasures of atmosphere, detail, and the now-and-again indisputably lovely phrase. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
“Rich and remarkable. . . . The ‘Tidewater’ stories stand as one of Styron’s finest works.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review“Essential Styron.” —Washington Post Book World“The stories . . . will surprise and delight. . . . Both heartbreaking and strangely consoling.” —The New York Times Book Review
From the Inside Flap
liant collection of "long short stories, " the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Sophie's Choice returns to the coastal Virginia setting of his first novels. Through the eyes of a man recollecting three episodes from his youth, William Styron explores with new eloquence death, loss, war, and racism.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
From the Back Cover
In this brilliant collection of "long short stories," the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Sophie's Choice returns to the coastal Virginia setting of his first novels. Through the eyes of a man recollecting three episodes from his youth, William Styron explores with new eloquence death, loss, war, and racism. "From the Trade Paperback edition.
About the Author
William Styron (1925–2006), born in Newport News, Virginia, was one of the greatest American writers of his generation. Styron published his first book, Lie Down in Darkness, at age twenty-six and went on to write such influential works as the controversial and Pulitzer Prize–winning The Confessions of Nat Turner and the international bestseller Sophie’s Choice.
