On "Kill Me with Chocolate" by Frank Scozzari (3719 words) ****

This easy-to-read story is a quest. A man is sent out to buy fine chocolate in the middle of the night in a city where the stores are not open twenty-four hours. Along the way, we are given lessons on love and on the nature of romancing a lady. Sometimes (actually, usually), women are really confusing to guys. Read the story here at Referential.

On "Hedda Gabler" by Henrik Ibsen ****

What a strange play this one is. As with Ibsen's trilogy centering around social issues, this one also deals, to some extent, with societal propriety and morals. But it's not so didactic as those others, and while the main character, Hedda, wants so badly not to conform to societal expectations, her desires hardly fall in a moral line. For her, freedom is everything--and everything she feels she can't get. She longs for an ideal world, in fact pushes others toward it (to their own peril), which she fears doing anything that would shock others.

As the play opens, Hedda has just gotten married to a scholar whom she finds a bore and with whom she's just gone on an extensive six-month honeymoon (made up in part by her husband's continuing research). She is consumed with taste and money, and as such, she has gotten her husband to purchase a house way beyond his means (and this, mostly just for a joke to her). Men, by turn, are consumed by her, dropping by to be the third wheel, wanting her to commit unbecoming acts with them and shocked that she would marry whom she has.

One of these is another scholar who has lived the life of a libertine and has repented and now has written a couple of fantastic books. He also once dated Hedda, before he got on the straight and narrow. As such, she has been disappointed by him, and she aims to get him back into the ideal world of total freedom, where societal opinions matter not at all. In the end, she manages to corrupt him again, but perhaps not in the manner that she had hoped, and the last act of "courage" becomes her own.

The introduction noted that Hedda is a character without a play, struggling to find the role in which she is to act. It seems a good observation, for indeed, like many of Ibsen's women, she is a showy figure meant to amuse but lacking substantial place in a male-dominated world, and the results are not pleasant. You can read the play here.

On "A Thing I Did" by Colin Winnette (234 words) ***

I think of this piece more like a prose poem than a story, but nevertheless here it is, because it's pretty cool. Winnette builds a prose boat and sets sail. See where it goes. Not too far, this one, for reasons to be discovered. Scroll down and read the story here at Blue Fifth Review.

On "An Enemy of the People" by Henrik Ibsen ****

The last in Ibsen's trilogy that includes A Doll's House, this one also attacks hypocritical Norwegian (yea, all) society, but unlike the first two plays, it does not focus on the role of women. Here, the centerpiece is a doctor who discovers that a town's main tourist attraction--its baths--is polluted by sewer water that is causing various diseases. Confronted with this truth, he lets others in town know. He starts with the leadership, who reject his charges on the basis that the town depends too much on the baths, and any bad publicity would turn tourists away and it would cost too much money and time to fix them.

The press, however, is very ready to jump on the doctor's side. However, those involved with the paper have their own agendas, whether power, money, or love. When these motivations prove not to look to bear any fruit when taking the doctor's side, the press quickly turns on the doctor to uphold the interests of the townspeople. After all, who wants to pay higher taxes to fix a problem or see less revenue from tourism?

With leadership and the press squarely backing a do nothing philosophy, the doctor is shunted by all. He loses his job, because he refuses to retract his report regarding the baths. His family loses its home; his children are kicked out of school and lose their jobs; his wife loses her inheritance. The situation is hopeless. What's more, rumors are rife that the doctor is in on a deal for himself (his father-in-law has bought shares in the baths at cheap prices and now insists his son-in-law retract his report so that he can make a killing in the market, and some dubious members of the press insist they want a cut of the profits--or the doctor's name will be mud). So what does the doctor do? He chooses to help the poor.

The latter is the doctor's heroic end, but is it realistic? The family may now have a "job" to do, but where exactly is it going to get the money to pay for the food and clothes?

I like to see a person of great virtue stand up to society, but as the play brings out, it's a rare person that does so. Even the so-called moderates prove unwilling to really sacrifice for the common good. However, I guess the play is a bit more optimistic than I am about people and about the human race. Were this something I'd have written, the doctor would have eventually buckled, justifying his compromised actions with lame excuses and feeling guilty the whole way. And if the doctor had remained true? He'd have ended up like Corey at the end of Arthur Miller's The Crucible--defiant but crushed dead beneath a set of stones.

This play hits hard at situations that, as adults, we face all too often. Remaining true to convictions inevitably comes up against everyday living, and often pits one conviction or concern against another (supply for family or refuse to be silent regarding an evil). Money makes the world go round. You can read the play for yourself here.

On "The River" by Christine Sneed (6372 words) ***

Unfortunately the long-term unemployed are all too familiar these days. Sneed's tale is about one of them, a man who decides to take up his time preparing for a lawsuit to crack down on pollution. Meanwhile, his marriage is falling apart. And his daughter, whose point of view this story comes from, just wants things to stay as they are, but her efforts seem only to create more trouble. An interesting sidelight is the daughter's boyfriend, who has gone off to college, and like the parents in this story, the girl and her boyfriend no longer talk. In a sense, then, the story is about breakdowns of communication--for the daughter, the communication breakdown is in a passive, nonconfrontational manner that we see echo throughout all her interactions. Read the story here at TriQuarterly.

On "Ghosts" by Henrik Ibsen ***

I now see why A Doll House is anthologized so much more often than Ghosts, the second in a trilogy of plays about Victorian-era Norway. The themes are similar, but where A Doll House carries a certain realness to it, Ghosts to me seemed overwrought and even a bit silly (especially its instantaneously disastrous end). Like A Doll House, Ghosts indicts Norwegian society for thoughtless slavery to a societal morality that is all about appearance rather than heart.

Mrs. Alving is an older woman who gives generously to her church and who does her duty to family. Married for a long-time philanderer, she kept quiet about his affairs so as to keep the man's reputation intact. The personal cost of this adherence to duty is about to take a deeper toll than she could have ever imagined, even now after her husband has died.

The pastor comes off as the least respectable of the characters, as well as the most hypocritical. In one passage, he becomes incensed that a layperson in his congregation married a fallen woman for money. And yet, Mrs. Alving points out, she married a fallen man--out of duty to her family, and at the urging of the pastor himself. The pastor claims that circumstances are different. (Later, when the pastor learns that the layperson didn't marry for money, the pastor accepts the man back into fellowship, only later to praise the man when he volunteers to take the fall for the pastor with regard to something the pastor has done in exchange for a favor involving monetary compensation.)

The "ghosts" of the title references the idea that one's ancestors' sins come back to haunt you (to the third and fourth generation, as the Bible would say). Here, Mr. Alving Sr.'s ghost haunts the characters in numerous ways. Their son, as it turns out, learns that he has contracted syphilis from birth. A woman the son falls in love with turns out to be Mr. Alving's own daughter by another woman. Mrs. Alving, who finally deigns to recognize, reveal, live by the truth, is redeemed too late and loses all, bound, again, by her duty to family. The play is in the public domain and can be read here.

On "The Railroad and the Churchyard" by Bjornsterne Bjornson (about 10,125 words) ****

Bjornson's story of two local friends and then enemies vying for control of the local government board explores issues of economy, friendship, government, and community, all the while providing a look at how mid-nineteenth-century Norwegian society worked, at least insofar as I have understood it from some of the nonfiction that I've read on Scandinavian culture. Democratic ways of running a community seem to go back pretty far in the far north. Here, the community decides on things together, but as in all such communities, some men have more sway than others.

The person with sway here in Knud Aakre, whose upbringing encouraged self-education and wide reading. Aakre serves as the chair of the governing body for the community, and he is assisted by his less-educated friend Lars Hogstad--at least until the story really gets going. Lars, at some point, comes to see Knud's ways as too conservative; the community pays higher and higher taxes but gets less and less for its money. A railroad wants to come through town. There will be easy money, investment. And it is with some good arguments that Lars wrests control of the board for himself, destroying a friendship in turn. Knud licks his wounds, bides his time, largely withdraws from public life. Lars becomes a bigger and bigger man, even serving on councils that pull away to the capital. The community flourishes--for a time. Speculation, as generally happens, proves dangerous, and all the community's loss of wealth eventually brings Knud's more somber ways back to the public notice, especially once it becomes known that the proposed railroad will run through the graveyard, disinterring the ancestors. Is Knud's concern for the community or only himself? Are they not, on some level, the same thing? A few choice events bring the story full circle. You can read it here.

On "Captain Mansana and Other Stories" by Bjornsterne Bjornson ***

Bjornson was a contemporary of the better-known Norwegian Henrik Ibsen. I was pulled to Bjornson for the Norwegian portion of my Scandinavian reading list because he is known as a writer of short stories about the common person, and such subject matter has often been of interest to me (going back to my high school reading of John Steinbeck).

This little book, however, does not start off with a tale of commoners but rather with one about nobility. The title story, Captain Mansana delves into the life of a man who fights for the revolution for the common people and whose father died doing the same. The story itself is set mostly in Italy. But it is hardly about the revolution either. It is, by and large, a love story, as we follow Captain Mansana as he falls for first one woman and then another. The first woman he falls for is a noblewoman known for breaking men's hearts, who in fact relishes in this reputation and in maintaining her cold front. Mansana, however, is up to the challenge and, like any leading men, does exactly what he sets out to do, winning her in a race she does not exactly voluntarily submit to. Soon, it is the woman who is pestering Mansana, begging to spend time with him. And Mansana, feeling cornered, wanders off to a village in Italy, where he finds himself falling for a common girl--and truly, it is a girl, barely into adulthood. He defends her honor, as her cousin sports with her but without serious intentions. This defense, however, exposes his own true feelings, as well as the feelings of the cousin, who begins to take the young woman seriously. The two fight for the gal's attentions, while the woman who has broken many a heart begins to wonder where her fiance has wandered off to. It takes some family intervention to get things back on the right track.

Surprisingly, given that Mansana is the title story and apparently had some fame in the near term, I found the other two stories in this collection more interesting. Not surprisingly, they had more to do with common Norwegians in the second half of the nineteenth century. "The Railroad and the Churchyard" explores the enmity and friendship between two men who struggle for power in a rural township. "Dust," meanwhile, explores religious and moral themes.

In the latter story, a traveler goes to visit a couple who has two young boys. The husband feels that it is impossible for people to raise children; the wife meanwhile finds that she has no way to reason with her husband. Likewise, the wife and housekeeper have some beliefs in immortality and in the divine, while the men in the story--especially the husband (but possibly the narrator as well)--tend to believe only in physical existence. These two ideas pair off against one another when another young boy in the neighborhood drowns in a nearby iced-over lake. The children are assured that the boy has gone to a better life with God by the housekeeper. The husband comes to the conclusion that the children must be sent away for education, sparking unrest from the mother and from the boys themselves, who when punished, run away. The search for the boys takes up much of the story, but suffice it to say that when they are found, not all is well. Have them fallen prey to the immortality myth, choosing death and life with God rather than to the harsh treatment of their father? Or has God answered the housekeeper's prayer and sent the boys away so that the father can learn that they must not be separated from the mother for schooling? A final irony closes the tale, calling into question the eternal order ("mysterious are the ways of God," notes the housekeeper), a far cry from Hans Christian Andersen's overtly religious fairy tales.

A major motif in "Dust" is in fact dust. It settles on the elements in the couple's house, impossible to be gotten rid of, just as stone accumulates in graveyards without ceasing or snow on the trees in winter. Does the snow come down from the heavens, as the mother at one point explains, or does it come from the earth and fall back to the earth, as the narrator explains? And what is immortality? Is it the ancient Nordic concept of fame and great deeds carried on in stories of one's descendents, or is it some kind of life eternal in the heavens? Where is our final resting place?

On "The Man Who Lived Like A Tree" by Dan Powell (726 words) ****

Here's something of a fantasy, something of an allegory, something of a not sure what to think. The tale takes a family tree and makes it literal. Or it takes a man and makes him figurative. Or it does both. Either way, one ends up feeling for this family and for the way that it is with us humans--all those ancestors we don't remember and are slated to join. Read the story here at Referential.

On "Seven Gothic Tales" by Isak Dinesen ***

Each of Dinesen's seven tales revolves in some way around the difference between appearance and reality. In the opening story, "The Deluge at Nordeney" a flood threatens an area of the country, and one set of people--including a priest with a grand reputation--return with a last boat to save a family stuck on its rooftop. The boat won't fit all, so some people have to stay behind, on the roof, and hope that the waters don't rise overnight so far that they don't survive. In the midst of this, the various roofgoers tell stories about their lives, including the famed priest, who turns out not to be who he is thought to be. Add to that a woman, an old maid, who was thwarted at any attempt to love--only, she rejected all suitors and accepted only one suitor she knew would fall away before the marriage could be consummated, thus to win the sympathy of others.

In "The Old Chevalier" a spurned lover walks out to the street after being dumped and is accosted by a beautiful woman who simply wants to spend time with him to ease her own mind and self. In the process, the eases the lover's grief--until she asks for money for spending the night!

In "The Monkey" a man tells his aunt he want to be married, and his aunt suggests a woman, who, it turns out, refuses. She will not marry. The aunt cannot let this stand, so--in a series of events that would likely never be put to print in the current surrounding--invites the woman to dinner and instructs her nephew to rape the woman. He does not, though much can be assumed, since the woman was made so drunk that she does not remember the night. Add to this another element: the man's reputation in town has become such that if he does not marry in a hurry, he will never.

In "The Roads Round Pisa" a count, married to a woman who is jealous, not of other women but of her own riches (and thus refuses to wear them), is caught up in a series of events that puts him into contact with a young man, who it turns out is not a young man at all but a woman. This woman stood in for another in a marital bed, the supposed wife not interested in consummating a marriage to a man much older than herself, especially as she is in love with another. (Ironically, the impotent old man had also employed another to fulfill his obligations, hoping to get his wife pregnant.) A duel results. This seemed to me perhaps the story the most typical of this theme of illusion in the book.

"The Supper at Elsinore" recounts the story of a man and his two never-married sisters. The man, who enjoys life at sea, especially as a pirate, leaves his bride-to-be just before his wedding and never again reappears. Various tales float about regarding his life--or death. The sisters, meanwhile, spurn various lovers as youths and relish complaining of their "old-maid" fate; thus, they are greatly relieved when their brother's former fiancee marries, leaving them as the sole objects of tragedy. In the end, the brother returns, in the form of a ghost.

Three men on a boat serve as the frame in which the main story of "The Dreamers" takes shape, which proves to be a story with yet other stories within. Three men fall for a single lady at various times. And each time, she wanders off and leaves the men, to grieve and search for their lost love. In the end, we discover that each of them love is the same woman and that she is not the same woman that any of them loved at all. Identity, the woman notes, is made to be cast aside. We should be more than one person; we should be many people. Thus the woman, when these three men meet her again, no longer recognizes the men, for she is a different woman altogether. And yet, we also learn the story--the true story--of her life and why she wishes never to be herself again.

"The Poet" concerns a old man who falls in love with a young woman. A problem ensues when a young protege of his also falls for the woman. But who does the woman love, the old man she is to marry or the young man can't stand to leave her. Add to this the idea that this man's "leave taking" is actually a planned suicide (unbeknownst to his acquaintances) and that the suicide turns instead into a jealous murder. Has the old man, all along, been living in a dream world?

The writing throughout was exquisite. Yet I found myself often lost in these tales, not up, at the current moment, for the concentration that is required of stories within stories within stories, as so many of these tales involved. The stories comment on one another and often end up having quite a bit to do with the overall story itself, but this is one collection--as I noted when rereading "The Poet" just to figure out how the details added up--that bears a second reading, even perhaps demands it.
 

On "Mullins" by Robert Sachs (2028 words) ***

Take this one with a long string of winks. Sachs pairs a self-centered no-it-all with a naive aid. The latter believes all that the former says and works tirelessly to make the former happy and fulfilled. The former is crotchety. Together, they make for a fun if silly pair. Read the story here at Black Heart Magazine.

On "Waiting for the 12:15" by Paul Myette (3809 words) ***

Myette's story is essentially an argument--or to put it another way, the argument is the frame for a story. It's about a trip back from a party, about how disastrous each person's part in the party was, about how we misinterpret one another, play charades with one another, pretend to be something we're not for one another. And it's about love, longstanding, not-very-exciting, tradition, stick-to-it love--what we all, on some level wish for. Read the story here at Apt.

On "The Emperor's New Clothes" by Hans Christian Andersen (1533 words) ******

Any tale that becomes so famous by its title that the whole idea is a cliche metaphor rendered merely by its mention has got to be powerful. Andersen's "Emperor" is a biting commentary on power, sycophantism, and pride. I love this old story, based, according to Andersen, on a thirteenth-century Spanish tale. Read the Andersen's version here.

On "The Complete Fairy Tales and Stories" by Hans Christian Andersen **

There can be too many tales. That's how I felt by the time that I was about halfway through this more than one-thousand-page collection. More Andersen that I ever imagined reading before I picked up this book.

There are reasons that Andersen is famous. At his best, his tales have a magical quality. Most of those tales have become movies, animated ones, courtesy of Disney: "The Little Mermaid," "The Ugly Duckling." A few, surprisingly have not. I would love to see the one about the girl whose brothers are turned into swans every night turned into a movie. Fascinating tale.

But those tales seem to fall mostly near the first third of the collection. As I read the collection, other themes became apparent, other obsessions. Andersen was a devout Christian, and many of the tales are strange treatises on the glory of the Protestant God. They wouldn't necessarily be too bad if they weren't so didactic. But I guess that is normal for a tale meant for kids. (Still other earlier tales seemed oddly [im]moral: the opening one, for example, in which a jealous man ends up killing himself; only the man he is jealous of isn't exactly a moral citizen himself--he's a liar, whose lies lead to the killing.)

In a few of these Christian tales, the story takes an almost medieval turn, with complex plotlines in which Christianity seems almost an add-on to what would otherwise be a very violent and horrifying tale. I'm thinking specifically of a convoluted tale in which swans rescue a miniature girl from a bog. The girl grows into a regular girl, except that during the day she is a girl with a mean disposition, and during the night she is a frog with a kind disposition. Enter a missionary. The girl looks to kill him, the frog to save him. Somewhere in here, love enters and a death and resurrection and the rescue of the girl's real mother and then a return to Egypt. Etc. Etc.

There are a lot of talking animals and a lot of talking objects. Frogs and teapots and streetlamps each impart lessons. It got a bit tiring after a very short while to read such pieces.

Still other tales are very clearly commentaries on Danish society or politicians. They were interesting from that perspective, and some of the lessons hold up well for political discourse today. I have read that in fact many of the tales were in fact commentaries on politics, and were I more of a Scandinavian scholar, I'd have likely enjoyed my reading more, being able to ferret out such connections.

As it was, I enjoyed the occasional story--and at 156 in the book, there were many to enjoy. But also many, many more to simply wad through.

What did I learn about Denmark? It's a land that should be prouder of its history and traditions, perhaps? Certainly, Andersen believes so.

On "How Tommy Soto Breaks Your Heart" by Susan Hope Lanier (889 words) ***

Here's a tale that vaguely revolves around 9/11. I like it because it captures the way in which life goes on around it, in some ways. I remember that day as one that rather stunned me, though. I didn't do much. I saw a bit of it on TV at work. I was in the process of losing my job, and we were sent home early. I met a coworker who was coming in late on my way out. At home, I napped. I didn't have a TV at home, so I went online a little, went to Target a little (it wasn't on), went to a bar and watched it. And then I didn't want to watch any more. Really, even at work, I'd left the TV room for a while because I couldn't take it. Not live.

In Lanier's piece, 9/11 is a backdrop for teenage angst over love, love for the nonwhite, the one who doesn't fit in. It's about liking something that others don't like and about being self-conscious about it. It's about wavering between varying feelings. Or really, maybe it's about something else entirely--read it here at Annalemma, and tell me what you think.

On "Hostages" by Shannon Heffernan (3143 words) ***

Anything can happen in a story. That's part of what makes them so fun to read. In some of the best stories, everything happens and nothing--that is, they wander around, letting life get messy, but they don't have a heavy story arc--they're just there. I found "Hostages" to be like that. Certainly, the piece is centered around a neighbor who has taken someone hostage, a situation that has more or less trapped a couple of twins in their apartment (and a few others outside their apartments). But life, mostly, goes on--the twins pack for moving, anguish over love, sickness, and what it means to truthful. There's not a lot of hysteria here. Like many such a situation, it is, as one of the officer's notes, mostly a waiting game. Read the story here at Annalemma.

On "Of Wires" by J. A. Tyler (219 words) ****

This is a short doozy of a tale. Tyler takes the old fairy tale of Rapunzel and adds in a robot of sorts. But really, it's a story about a relationship got dormant and one man's (or robot's) attempt to restore it. Perhaps the fact that I've recently gone through--or still am going through--such an experience is why I found this story such an effective metaphor for the process of grieving a relationship that ends in silence. Read the story, along with two other shorts, here at Red Fez.

On "Fortune" by Christine Sneed (4347 words) ***

Sneed's "Fortune" is an indictment of material desire, a theme that runs throughout many of her stories. It's also about not just fortune as riches but fortune as one's future. In it, a so-called Mr. Potter decides to take up fortune telling to make a little extra money in order to purchase things for his girlfriend. Things don't turn out quite as he expected. Read the story here at StorySouth.

On "Enough" by Lee Martin (1002 words) ****

This tale is all in the voice. Martin has written some doozies over the years, so it's nice to see a sample of his work available online. In this piece, a couple of identity thieves decide to go straight. But deciding and doing are two different things, and it's hard sometimes to follow through. Read the story here at Freight.

On "Rose Garden" by Jacob Silverman (3366 words) ***

This is apparently Silverman's first published story--I'd love to see what comes next. The piece has an eery feel that becomes increasingly eerier as one continues reading. It's about how the Net can feed our obsessions and how those obsessions, some of them not necessarily healthy, can take over. Perhaps, most chilling of all is that like the murders in this story that Ivan follows, we are left with not enough information--or rather, with just enough information, enough to make us want to search for more. Read the story here at Storychord.