Monday, October 31, 2011

First Love and Other Sorrows/Harold Brodkey/223 pp.

A MULSA book sale remainder!

Originally published in 1958, this collection of short stories was reissued in 1988, and that's the edition I read and am reviewing. A St. Louis native who attended Harvard, Brodkey writes stories that seem almost autobiographical. His description of St. Louis locations, and of growing up poor (but formerly well-off), remind me of another St. Louis resident, Tennessee Williams.
I especially enjoyed the first story, "State of Grace", and all the stories that dealt with the narrator's sister/Laurie/Laura and her attempts to find a "good man" to "settle down with". Although the people have different names in each story, you can't help feeling that these are all the same people, and that they are somehow personally known by Brodkey himself.

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