Bonbons or Bon Mots?

These two clever books are like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get. And for the lover of books, one of them would make a better Valentine’s day present than a box of overpriced, stale, not-made-in-Dartmouth chocolates, too.

Ever since childhood, I’ve adored short stories. Well written, they’re as satisfying and challenging as any novel; badly written, we have only to dally with them a short time before the tale is ended and we’re on to another conquest. My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead has a catchy (if hard to say aloud quickly) title, and is a tasty collection of stories from around the world.

The opening essay by Eugenides nicely explains both the title of the book, from a poem written in the last century BC by the Roman Catullus about his love for Lesbia, and how the love changed when the sparrow died. Eugenides explains, “Despite the multiplicity of subjects and situations treated here, one Catullan requirement remains in force throughout. In each of these twenty-six love stories, either there is a sparrow or the sparrow is dead.” He makes clear that the collection is not so much about love but about the love story, and how that might not all be roses and sunshine. While I like the essay and it ties the collection together nicely, I would have enjoyed a story by Eugenides too.

It’s always fascinating to pick up a collection of stories by various authors and wonder how the editor decided who to include and who to leave out. It was very pleasing to find Alice Munro’s ‘The Bear Came over the Mountain’ in Eugenides’ collection, the only Canadian in a cosmopolitan collection of greats that includes Raymond Carver, Anton Chekhov, Isaac Babel, James Joyce, and Milan Kundera. A few of the stories aren’t to my tastes, including the interminable ‘Tonka’ by Robert Musil, but then I don’t like rum-and-butter caramels, either. That doesn’t make either the story—or the chocolate—bad, just not my preference.

Do I have a favourite in this collection? Absolutely. While I especially love the works of Munro, Kundera, Joyce and Carver, I know that one of my former, and very much respected, professors from Acadia will approve wholeheartedly when I say that my favourite story is “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, with her unique way of keeping one final suitor in her life for many years. This is a story with more than a bit of a bite to it—a little jalapeno in the chocolate, if you will.

As the gang from Monty Python would say when changing subjects, “and now for something completely different.” Four Letter Word is a collection of original love letters specially commissioned for the work by its editors, Joshua Knelman and Rosalind Porter.

Whether they are works of fiction or nonfiction, books of letters can be very appealing reads. Perhaps we’re drawn in by what’s left unsaid, caught up in miniature dramas that leave us wanting more. Or perhaps we just enjoy feeling rather voyeuristic as we peer into the words cascading from one heart to another. Whether the recipient’s heart is open to those words is quite another story. Rosalind Porter writes in the introduction that “there is quite a bit of humour, a fair dose of sarcasm, and a mountain of grief” in the forty-one short letters of the collection, a very accurate assessment.

You won’t be surprised to find that letters are interpreted in different ways. Some are more interior monologues, others take the form of letters never sent, or sent perhaps too late. Several of the works are designed as emails, conversations between correspondents in Jeff Parker’s hilarious male looking for proof of his sperm viability, embarrassingly one-sided in Lionel Shriver’s bitingly funny but painful portrait of a woman after a one night stand sending emails to her new ‘see amore.’ Some are chillingly dark, exploring love through loss or rejection or murder, and all are unique.

Collections are always fun because chances are you’ll find at least a few authors you’ve never read, or hadn’t heard of before, and you’ll find some gems. I didn’t know the work of all the contributors, and of course some I enjoyed more than others. Margaret Atwood’s shimmered with her usual quick wit, Jeanette Winterson’s wistful story of a love gone wrong through photograph captions was my favourite, while Douglas Coupland’s usual introspective droning was merely something to be endured with gritted teeth.

Both of these books are wonderfully fun romps, volumes that you can pick up and sample now and again. But just as most of us won’t eat a whole box of chocolates at once, we might not want to read both volumes all the way through, back to back.

Freelance writer Jodi DeLong wants a new bookshelf for Valentine’s Day.