Friday, August 21, 2026

Finally Friday - Shirley Hazard stories

Shirley Hazard (1931-2016) is a renowned author from back in the day. She won the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and more.  I found her Collected Stories at our library sale for only two dollars.  What a lovely treat!

back blurb - These twenty eight stories are masterworks in telescoping focus, ranging from quotidian struggles between beauty and pragmatism to satirical send-ups of international bureaucracy, from the Italian countryside to suburban CT. Hazard's heroes are high-minded romantics who struggle to accommodate their feelings to the twentieth-century world of office jobs and dreary marriages.

Hazard's writing and characters have an old fashioned touch, but in a good way. Her descriptions of world weary people going  about their day, or dreading a dinner party are spot-on.  Sharp  humor, clever dialogue - her writing propels one to keep turning the page. I laughed out loud at times.  One of my favorite sentences was something to the effect that the "woman looked like a resort town in the rain".  Oh my!  Can't you just picture it - bedraggled, a bit rough. 

This book was a gem on sale. I now need to seek out her novels. Quite the find. 

 

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