Tag Archives: American classics

#BookReview ‘They Came Like Swallows’ by William Maxwell #literary

Bunny Morison is eight years old and his mother Elizabeth is the centre of his life. Published in 1937, They Came Like Swallows is the second novel by William Maxwell. An autobiographical novella based on the 1918 flu epidemic seen through the eyes of Bunny, Robert and their father James, it’s a sensitive portrayal of the depths of family love not always outwardly expressed. William Maxwell This is a quiet character-led story about love, anxiety and grief, beautifully-written. I most enjoyed Bunny’s viewpoint, the simplicity and power of the love of a small child who sees things he doesn’t understand while sensing a significance. Thirteen-year-old Robert, first seen through Bunny’s eyes, seems a bully but is revealed in his own section as a boy approaching adulthood, protective of his pregnant mother and desperate to please his emotionally-absent father. And finally, James’s section shows the reasons for this distance. Each character is teetering on the edge of change, immersed in his own fears and hopes.
As the story unfolds we are introduced to the Morison’s wider family. Bunny dwells on his aunt Irene, Elizabeth’s sister. ‘… their hands felt entirely different and looked entirely different. From Irene’s hands he drew excitement, and from his mother’s the fact that she loved him. Irene and his mother were as different as the two faces of a coin. And yet they never seemed conscious of the difference.’ When their mother must go away to have her baby, Bunny and Robert go to stay with Aunt Clara, Uncle Wilfred and their Grandmother Morison. Robert, rubbing up against the house rules and being told he can’t do the things he wants to do, finds a dictionary hidden beneath the living room table. ‘Finding the wrong kinds of words in the dictionary was not a crime. They couldn’t put him in jail for it, but it was a thing he would not want to be caught doing, especially by Aunt Clara. It was like telling lies or listening to people who didn’t know he was there.’
A classic.
The title is from a Yeats poem:-
They came like swallows and like swallows went,
And yet a woman’s powerful character
Could keep a swallow to its first intent;
And half a dozen in formation there,
That seemed to whirl upon a compass-point,
Found certainty upon the dreaming air…
From ‘Coole Park, 1929’ by WB Yeats
BUY THE BOOK

Read my review of TIME WILL DARKEN IT also by William Maxwell and its First Paragraph.

If you like this, try:-
Anything is Possible’ by Elizabeth Strout
A Town Called Solace’ by Mary Lawson
The Pull of the Stars’ by Emma Donoghue

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
THEY CAME LIKE SWALLOWS by William Maxwell #books https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5sD via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 128 ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ #amwriting #FirstPara

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them.”
‘The Catcher in the Rye’ by JD Salinger JD SalingerBUY THE BOOK

Try one of these 1st paras & discover a new author:-
The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty’ by Sebastian Barry
The Slaves of Solitude’ by Patrick Hamilton
The Rainmaker’ by John Grisham 

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#FirstPara THE CATCHER IN THE RYE  by JD Salinger #amwriting https://wp.me/p5gEM4-4ev via @SandraDanby