The Lone Pilgrim

Rating:
Summary: A pleasure to read
Review: I am a long-time Laurie Colwin fan and I was glad to see that this book of short stories - which I wasn't familiar with - was re-released. It was interesing to find many of the same themes from other Colwin books (extra-marital affairs, a sometimes obsessive focus on domestic comfort) re-appear in these stories and to find some new themes as well. Colwin had a unique gift for writing mainly happy, funny stories about quirky, attractive people with interesting jobs. Many of the stories have a fable-like quality. They could be precious but they're not. Narrators usually lead charmed lives and you could resent them, but instead you root for them.

These stories seem to have been written in the early part of Colwin's career. The final story "Family Happiness" appears to be the first chapter of the novel of the same name. What's interesting about this collection is that it includes a few stories that are a bit darker or more experimental in feeling than much of Colwin's other work. One story is about a famous poet's unwelcome attention to a young serious-minded girl in a college town. (He watches her as she grows up, writes poems about her, and is generally obsessed with the girl.) The narrator of another hilarious story is a young wife keeping a secret from her college professor husband. The secret is that she is a pothead who has been continuously stoned from the moment thay met - an unusual heroine for Colwin, but she pulls it off!

My favorite Colwin book is still "Happy All The Time" but these stories were a pleasure to read. The enjoyment I get from reading her stuff is similar to the enjoyment I get from Jane Austen. If that's the kind of thing you like, I highly recommend "The Lone Pilgrim."

Rating:
Summary: Keeping Colwin's pilot light alive!
Review: It is a joy to see all of Laurie Colwin's books reissued to delight her previous fans and engage new readers. My hardcover copy of "The Lone Pilgrim" from 1981 has my then-name written on the flyleaf. I devoured the stories, carried the book carefully across the country, and it sits with the following volume "Family Happiness" and her other books, including a British edition of "Passion and Affect" that I tracked down used, pre-Internet, pre-Amazon.com.

Laurie Colwin's works hold up amazingly well, at least in my opinion. It would be easy to despise her well-heeled, comfortable characters if they had been wrought by less skillful hands. She truly is America's own Jane Austen.

Rating:
Summary: Keeping Colwin's pilot light alive!
Review: It is a joy to see all of Laurie Colwin's books reissued to delight her previous fans and engage new readers. My hardcover copy of "The Lone Pilgrim" from 1981 has my then-name written on the flyleaf. I devoured the stories, carried the book carefully across the country, and it sits with the following volume "Family Happiness" and her other books, including a British edition of "Passion and Affect" that I tracked down used, pre-Internet, pre-Amazon.com.

Laurie Colwin's works hold up amazingly well, at least in my opinion. It would be easy to despise her well-heeled, comfortable characters if they had been wrought by less skillful hands. She truly is America's own Jane Austen.