They’re not flamboyant,
but they are fabulous…
Book review:
Seven Gothic Tales
by Isak Dinesen (1885-1962)
Dorothy Canfield, Introduction
New York: Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, Inc., 1934
420 pages
Isak Dinesen’s story doesn’t stop with Out of Africa. For starters, Isak Dinesen isn’t her name, but you probably know that.
Baroness Karen Christenze von Blixen-Finecke (née Dinesen) was a Danish author who wrote using several pen names, notably Isak Dinesen.
Her oeuvre is lush and memorable. Out of Africa is a compelling classic tale of life and love. Who wouldn’t love Denys Finch Hatton? After you’ve read Babette’s Feast, you don’t have any trouble recalling what it’s about. The films by the same names are authentic delights.
Seven Gothic Tales isn’t flamboyant, but it is fabulous. If you’re a writer, you may feel—a lot, or a little—that you wish you could write like Isak Dinesen. If you’re not a writer, you could wish that you may be one in another life.
Her muse is fertile and friendly—she manages, on page after page, to write what Coleridge identified as “the best words.” The storytelling is warm, the characters are vivid and realistic, and the context is so desirable.
Two of my favorite Gothic tales are “The Old Chevalier” and “The Poet.” The narrator in “The Old Chevalier” mentions, with approval, “I…do not think that I could ever really love a woman who had not, at some time or other, been up on a broomstick.” In “The Old Poet,” one of the characters is “the Councilor,” who “maintained an idea of paradise, for his generation had been brought up on the thought of life everlasting, and the idea of immortality came naturally to him.”
Isak Dinesen writes with casual skill to create worlds in which humanity thrives, and she fills Seven Gothic Tales with civilized entertainment.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2018 All rights reserved.
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