Misunderstandings: Short Stories - Hardcover

Collins, Clive

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0714529680 ISBN 13: 9780714529684

Publisher: Marion Boyars, 1993

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

A debut collection of ten stories that elegantly limns the power of the often innocent misunderstanding to wound the human heart. In settings that range from the US to Japan to his native Britain, Collins (Sachiko's Wedding, 1990) writes about men and women whose lives are changed, but not shattered, by seismic moments of revelation or insight. In one the most accomplished pieces here, ``A Floating World,'' a sheltered Japanese young woman, who had ``imagined her life was secure'' with husband Jun, learns on a holiday visit to Venice--an experience that becomes almost surreal as mistakes and muddles multiply in dizzying profusion to end in a frightening assault--``that nothing was certain, not her dreams, not her fears: for certainty itself had no more substance than the rainbow.'' Meanwhile, the homely housewife who spends her days working in the family fast-food shop mistakes the kindness of an elegant woman customer for love, and leaves her family--only to learn that her action ``wasn't a mistake, it was a misunderstanding, a slight misunderstanding,'' a semantic distinction that offers negligible comfort. In other stories, a famous sculptor kills himself in a remote Colorado canyon when he realizes that he's become ``a hollow place, containing only the echoes of what had once been there'' after the suicide of his lover (``The Snowman''); an unhappily married Japanese woman, once in love with a foreigner whom she regrets not confiding in, finds happiness in her son and her work as a part-time geisha (``Waka''); and Nick, a young British media celebrity in Japan, falls deeply in love with an art student, then learns that her family has promised her to another man (``A Blue Ribbon''). Not groundbreaking, but a welcome reminder of how much pleasure a well-told tale can still deliver. A most readable first collection. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

Written in plain, unadorned prose that highlights the characters' alienation and loneliness, these 10 stories by the author of Sachiko's Wedding focus on imperfect relationships and desperate people who are often disappointed even when pursuing the most ordinary ambitions. In "A Slight Misunderstanding," a clerk in a Tokyo boxed-lunch shop, worn out by her unfulfilling marriage and job, falls in love with an elegant young woman who epitomizes the independence she lacks and the escape of which she dreams. Englishman Nick Rossa, newly arrived in Tokyo as "A Blue Ribbon" opens, becomes a TV star there with relative ease but finds love on a different turf exasperating. Set in modern Japan, Britain and America, these tales depict men grappling with romantic uncertainties amidst enormous prosperity, while women deal with more limited options. In "Her Victory," a Tokyo University student thinks of nothing but outmaneuvering her rival in a matrimonial contest whose prize is an English lecturer. "Waka" portrays a dutiful Japanese housewife who escapes once a week to a job as a "hostess" providing sex in a club for men. Collins instills these sad stories with poignant insights, resonant emotion and indomitable hope, prompting affection and admiration for his hard-pressed protagonists.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Marion Boyars
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0714529680
• ISBN 13: 9780714529684
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224