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A review by carosbookcase
A Place Like Home: Short Stories by Rosamunde Pilcher
5.0
After reading [b:Snow in April|60469|Snow in April|Rosamunde Pilcher|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386924757l/60469._SY75_.jpg|1323954] recently, I wanted to follow it up with another book by [a:Rosamunde Pilcher|20849|Rosamunde Pilcher|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1363607202p2/20849.jpg]. I would have grabbed one of her novels if I’d had one on my shelf that I hadn’t already read. But I didn’t.
What I did have was a collection of her short stories, A Place Like Home. Well, I’m not one who typically gravitates towards short stories, but I do make exceptions.
This collection was mainly about women finding the right man. But as with her novels these stories are also about the common struggles of everyday life, moments of pain and of joy, and understanding one’s self.
As Lucinda Riley points out in the introduction to this collection, “Rosamunde had the unique gift of being able to sum up the essence of some of life’s big questions in just a few wise words.” She gives the example of a line from the short story, “Someone to Trust”. “Loving a person … is not finding perfection but forgiving faults.” There is a similar phrase in her novel, ‘September.’ “Loving isn’t finding perfection, but forgiving horrible faults.”
There are other examples in this collection of short stories that feel like the seed of Pilcher’s later novels, and the ideas that she worried at and refined as her writing progressed.
This collection was a joy to read, but I think I appreciated it more because I was already familiar with her later books. If this had been my first introduction to Pilcher I'm not sure I would have appreciated this collection quite so much.
What I did have was a collection of her short stories, A Place Like Home. Well, I’m not one who typically gravitates towards short stories, but I do make exceptions.
This collection was mainly about women finding the right man. But as with her novels these stories are also about the common struggles of everyday life, moments of pain and of joy, and understanding one’s self.
As Lucinda Riley points out in the introduction to this collection, “Rosamunde had the unique gift of being able to sum up the essence of some of life’s big questions in just a few wise words.” She gives the example of a line from the short story, “Someone to Trust”. “Loving a person … is not finding perfection but forgiving faults.” There is a similar phrase in her novel, ‘September.’ “Loving isn’t finding perfection, but forgiving horrible faults.”
There are other examples in this collection of short stories that feel like the seed of Pilcher’s later novels, and the ideas that she worried at and refined as her writing progressed.
This collection was a joy to read, but I think I appreciated it more because I was already familiar with her later books. If this had been my first introduction to Pilcher I'm not sure I would have appreciated this collection quite so much.