The Lion in the Room Next Door: Short Stories, by Merilyn Simonds
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The Lion in the Room Next Door: Short Stories, by Merilyn Simonds
Download Ebook Online The Lion in the Room Next Door: Short Stories, by Merilyn Simonds
The Lion in the Room Next Door dances the line between fiction and memoir, crystallizing moments from one woman’s life as she travels through childhood, marriage, and motherhood to the true love that may come after. Each tale in this collection of eleven linked stories unfolds in a landscape, distinctly lush and evocative, where episodes from an individual life are transformed into moments of universal significance. In the title story, a child inhabits her own private realm within a maze of corridors and rooms in a hotel in Brazel where she comes to recognize the truth of what she alone has heard. In “The Blue of the Madrugada,” the girl grows into a wilful young woman and discovers the complexities of love by the light of blue candles. In “Taken for Delirium,” amid the revolving seasons and nature’s endless regeneration of the Ontario woods, the woman and her husband cope as their marriage falters. And in “The Still Point,” the young wife and mother, in a Mexican landscape mysterious with unexplained occurences, breaks free of her bonds. The stories in the Lion in the Room Next Door test the boundaries of literary prose, unfolding like memory itself in sharply etched images. The narrative is potent with remembered pasts, fragments of myth and dream, and the magic within the mundane. As the heroine travels through exotic landscapes, she struggles to find her own way through the terrain of her heart. Praise for The Lion in the Room Next Door: “Written with delicacy and grace, illuminating both the nature of memory and the kind of work fiction can perform. It is a great pleasure to read Merilyn Simonds.” —Hilary Mantel “Vivid, wistful, beautifully shaped.” —Elizabeth Hay “Lush, gorgeous, and evocative . . . charged with precise observation, generosity, acceptance and the magic that comes of looking closely at the world in which we all dwell.” —Douglas Glover “Beautifull wrought, emotionally complex, satisfying fiction. Simonds may be the next Alice Munro.” —Kirkus Reviews (U.S. starred review) “The exactitude of description, the shocks of colour and imagery and the rhythmic, sonorous prose are an intoxication, a fierce and compelling joy . . . Here is a writer of powerful talent . . .” —Independent on Sunday (U.K.)
The Lion in the Room Next Door: Short Stories, by Merilyn Simonds - Amazon Sales Rank: #3087047 in eBooks
- Published on: 2015-09-06
- Released on: 2015-09-06
- Format: Kindle eBook
The Lion in the Room Next Door: Short Stories, by Merilyn Simonds Amazon.com Review Canadian writer Merilyn Simonds's first book is an exquisite, beguiling collection of interlinked stories. Rendering one woman's life from childhood into motherhood and middle age, The Lion in the Room Next Door begins in Brazil where the narrator is living in the Hotel Terminus with her parents and sisters, waiting for her father's new factory to be finished so they can move into a house. She spies on the other guests, even on her own father as he eats his breakfast alone, and is preoccupied by a sound she hears beneath the hotel's life, at night, a rumbling that "moves through the wall by my head," then "recedes like the tide." She goes searching for the source of the sound, slipping out of her bedroom at night, or dreaming she has slipped out. It is the sound of childhood enchantment, where everywhere you look you see a buried life.
As the book progresses, the narrator travels the world and crosses the threshold into her erotic life. Foreign places are full of the promise of sex and the threat of predatory men: the leering porter, the soldier with a gun on the beach who eyes her as she swims. Throughout she is involved in various complicated affairs, and sex moves more and more to the forefront of her story, becoming the thing that hums below the surface, the big mystery, the same mystery over and over. Alas, the narrator's preoccupation with her sexual power becomes a little tiresome--like a girlfriend who talks about men all the time, sometimes I wished Simonds would change the subject. Nevertheless The Lion in the Room Next Door is a formidable debut, full of shining moments and careful lyricism. --Emily White
From Publishers Weekly Keenly observed, the stories that make up Simonds's second book (after the nonfiction The Convict Lover) chart the course of one woman's life, from her earliest apprehension of sex to her midlife intimations of mortality. Divided into three sections ("Saudades--Yearnings," "Lipes--Sorrows," and "Milagros--Miracles"), the 11 narratives take the unnamed Canadian narrator through several familiar rites of passage, including escape into an early marriage and a later decision to leave her husband. But in its particulars, the existence described is unfamiliar, even exotic. The narrator spends her '50s childhood in Brazil, lives her first years as a wife and mother traveling by van around Europe, raises her children on a subsistence farm in northern Canada and, breaking out of her marriage, travels to Mexico and Hawaii. Simonds writes about this life with a poet's attention to language and metaphor. In the exquisitely wrought title story, for instance, a leashed lion takes nocturnal walks through the halls of a Brazilian hotel, leaving "a faint scent of feline. A memory of topaz eyes." While the image captures a child's presentiment of sex, the story subtly suggests both the privilege and the loneliness of expatriate life. Indeed, Simonds masterfully juxtaposes her narrator's discordant feelings in all the richly layered narratives. At times, the resemblance to memoir grows irksome, as when information is withheld that might be too personal or when events are summarized that might be dramatized. More often, Simonds is brilliant in her silences, showing just enough and nothing more. Writing lapidary sentences, she has crafted stories so solid they seem sculpted, yet so delicate they remain full of mystery. (Feb.) FYI: The Convict Lover received the Arthur Ellis Award and was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist This collection of interconnected short stories, published in Canada in 1999, garnered well-deserved outstanding reviews. The eleven stories are organized under the significant Yearnings, Sorrows, and Miracles in a woman's life. Although the stories are fictional, the easy-flowing first-person narration gives them the feel of a memoir. The unnamed central character, like the author, is Canadian-born and spent part of her childhood in Brazil. Both influences are reflected in Simonds' haunting prose, which is both lush and concise. The stories are seductive, melancholy and dark, sensual and sexual. Danger, assault, or loss is revealed, sometimes unexpectedly, or lurking just around the corner, just under the surface. Each chapterlike story is complete by itself; together, they tell of a woman's experiences, from childhood into her 40s--experiences of love and longing, the pain of separation and letting go, the struggle to heal after suffering. Simonds, who has won several Canadian writing awards, is the author of 10 books, including The Convict Lover, the stage adaptation of which premiered in Toronto in 1998. Grace Fill
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Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. Poetic Prose By Syke27 I picked up this book at a used book sale because the cover looked intriguing and I like to read all sorts of different books. The first chapter confused me slightly and I wasn't sure I'd like the book. The second story helped me understand why the first chapter was confusing and I came to the conclusion that Merilyn Simonds is a master storyteller. This book is through the eyes of on woman from childhood through adulthood. Just as your earliest childhood memories are confusing, so are hers. I realized when I was a child I took solace and comfort in certain perceptions and beliefs, that were not real. I have VIVID memories and emotional pulls to things, places and people that no longer intrigue me or anyone else. In short, this book is incredible. Her writing is precise, clear and thought provoking. Almost psycholoically stimulating in ways you never thought a book could be. This book quickly became a top ten favorite for me.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful. New book of vignettes makes the everyday extraordinary. By staceyc@uniserve.com Merilyn Simonds brings hope to those of us who have been instructed by our teachers and mentors to write about what we know best. In a series of personal vignettes, Simonds carefully recreates moments and situations from her past, turning them into art. A real page turner, this book has to be begun from the beginning every time it is picked up (I'm making it last!). The writer lets readers into the most private corners of her being ... and we recognize something of ourselves there.
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