All the Days and Nights : The Collected Stories (Vintage International)

Rating:
Summary: Everyday life can be both endearing and boring
Review: Having been familiar with some of the writings of Maxwell's counterparts at The New Yorker (i.e. Cheever, Updike, Salinger) I was expecting to be periodically impressed while I read this anthology. I did enjoy most of the stories (though not most of the short improvisations). They are best read slowly, by a sensitive reader who likes to look at everyday life. Regretfully, nothing in this book made me whisper "wow."

Rating:
Summary: beautiful portraits of ordinary life
Review: These short stories are best read slowly. They contained lovingly detailed characters, characters that require you to spend the time to get to know them. Maxwell examines some rather ordinary people in their ordinary life struggles. But he does so insightfully and lovingly. The "improvisations" at the end of the book are rather unique, and their genesis (improvised bedtime stories to his wife) mesh perfectly with the themes of the rest of the stories.

Rating:
Summary: beautiful portraits of ordinary life
Review: These short stories are best read slowly. They contained lovingly detailed characters, characters that require you to spend the time to get to know them. Maxwell examines some rather ordinary people in their ordinary life struggles. But he does so insightfully and lovingly. The "improvisations" at the end of the book are rather unique, and their genesis (improvised bedtime stories to his wife) mesh perfectly with the themes of the rest of the stories.

Rating:
Summary: American Bible
Review: This, like the Bible, is a book of two halves: one long and relatively weighty, the other short and attractively simple.
The first part is Maxwell's collected stories, chosen to represent a period of time stretching from the thirties to the nineties. These all, to varying degrees follow the trademark Maxwell approach of hovering on the edges of fiction and biography. Some (The Man in the Moon, Billie Dyer) appear to be straight non-fiction, while in others the elements of fiction are stronger. All, however, are powerful evocations of the human landscape of Maxwell's childhood, or of the experiences of later life.
The second part of the work is a collection of what Maxwell calls "improvisations": fables or fairy stories which contrast strikingly with his more familiar naturalistic pieces. The connecting thread is his moving clarity of vision. Most of these stories are only a few pages long, but they combine humour and humanity in a way which makes them a permanent part of the reader's mind.
All the Days and Nights is a wonderful book, which for those familiar with Maxwell's longer works offers, in the best sense, more of the same. Or, for those new to the author, the improvisations in particular are an enticing and accessible introduction to one of America's best 20th century writers.