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"From the author of The Springs of Affection comes a second and final collection-20 masterly short stories from the glory days of The New Yorker. "Reading Maeve Brennan is like watching a master jeweler construct a ticking watch from an array of tiny, inanimate parts." -Linda Barrett Osborne, New York Times Book Review "So good that I kept putting the book down to savor a description or perfect phrase, to hug myself with malicious joy, and to put off the evil hour when the stories would be done." -Katherine A. Powers, Boston Sunday Globe When The Springs of Affection was published in 1997, the poet Eamon Grennan called it a classic, a book that placed Maeve Brennan "among the best Irish short-story writers since Joyce." The Rose Garden gathers the rest of her short fiction, some of it set in her native Dublin but most of it in and around her adopted Manhattan. The riches here are many, but the collection's centerpiece is a suite of satirical scenes from suburban life, stories "a little meaner than Cheever's, and wittier than Updike's" (Los Angeles Times Book Review)."
Product Description
From the author of The Springs of Affection comes a second and final collection-20 masterly short stories from the glory days of The New Yorker. "Reading Maeve Brennan is like watching a master jeweler construct a ticking watch from an array of tiny, inanimate parts." -Linda Barrett Osborne, New York Times Book Review"So good that I kept putting the book down to savor a description or perfect phrase, to hug myself with malicious joy, and to put off the evil hour when the stories would be done." -Katherine A. Powers, Boston Sunday GlobeWhen The Springs of Affection was published in 1997, the poet Eamon Grennan called it a classic, a book that placed Maeve Brennan "among the best Irish short-story writers since Joyce." The Rose Garden gathers the rest of her short fiction, some of it set in her native Dublin but most of it in and around her adopted Manhattan. The riches here are many, but the collection's centerpiece is a suite of satirical scenes from suburban life, stories "a little meaner than Cheever's, and wittier than Updike's" (Los Angeles Times Book Review).
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Herbert's Retreat is a snug community of forty or so houses that cluster together on the east bank of the Hudson thirty miles above New York City. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Herbert's Retreat is a snug community of forty or so houses that cluster together on the east bank of the Hudson thirty miles above New York City. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Maeve Brennan's writing, although increasingly difficult to find, is beautiful, precise, enjoyable, knock-about, sly, funny, sad, and uplifting. Yes, really, it is ALL those things! These are short stories set in her adopted New York or in Dublin, where she grew up and lived until she was 18. Brennan was an accomplished writer who can easily match up to other excellent short story writers such as Mansfield. Human failing & fraility through love, heart-ache, insecurity, and vanity puncture the egos of many of the people who populate these pages. Many of the characters recur in more than one story. Amongst the most loving and delightful are the tales of Bluebell the labrador, who suffers city life whilst waiting anxiously to go back to the seaside. You can almost smell the ocean in Brennan's evocation of life at the beach. I found myself rationing a certain number of pages a night so that I wouldn't finish the book... unfortunately I did anyway.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
5 reviews
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful
And a beautiful garden it is
3 Feb 2000
Format:Hardcover
I'd never heard of Maeve Brennan before I picked up this book, and I'm sorry that it's taken me so long to find her. This was a wonderful surprise, filled with astute observations, sly humor, and delightful prose. The stories in this collection bring to mind Raymond Carver and J.D. Salinger in their recording of the subtle moments in life, when nothing seems to outwardly happen but profound shifts in power and status occur behind the visages of the complacent and bemused characters she so brilliantly sketches. If you're looking for a steady stream of action, you'd do better elsewhere, but if you prefer incisive characterizations and a more gentle touch, please give this a try. Make no mistake, though, in believing her to be some imitator. Stories like "A Snowy Night on West Forty-ninth Street" and "The Door on West Tenth Street" showcase a writer with her own distinct and wonderful voice, someone who probably deserves more attention than she's received thus far. Once I finished these stories I immediately bought her other collections, eager to read more.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Phenomenal
4 Jun 2001
Format:Hardcover
Ms. Maeve Brennan wrote for and about, "The New Yorker", magazine for over four decades. The New Yorker is many things including a publication known for excellence. To have been a part of such an institution for so long is enough to place this woman in a very small group if not alone for her tenure there. "The Rose Garden", is one of two books that collect short stories Ms. Brennan created, and they are without exception excellent.
Of the twenty stories there are a few that are stand-alone tales. The book opens and then closes with a series of stories that share place and characters but also could stand by themselves as well. The first grouping is a brilliant and savage attack on a small community north of Manhattan, which is based upon a community the writer, lived in. She has a rapier wit and she uses it to dismember the people and their pretensions that occupy this community. She does it with such style that some of the targets would probably lack the insight to see just how badly she savaged them and their affected lifestyle. There are two stories that on their own are worth owning the book, one is, "The Servant's Dance", and the other begins with, "The Holy Terror". Writing such as this is a rare event.
The cover of the book is a picture of the writer from 1949. If those Irish Eyes of hers ever focused on a person and identified them as a target, it would be akin to being told Mike Wallace of 60 minutes was waiting to speak with you.
A wonderful writer and a woman that must have been a daunting presence to be in the midst of. Fantastic reading!
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
A female Cheever
8 Mar 2005
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Maeve Brennan wrote for THE NEW YORKER for many years, as did John Cheever, but that is only one thing they had in common. The other is their talent for observing--with only a little smidgen of a judgmental attitude--the foibles and hobbies of the wealthy and the social climbers of their particular world (specifically, Manhattan in the 1930s through the 1950s).
In THE ROSE GARDEN, Brennan--an abundantly talented Irish native who spent many years living and writing in New York--examines most particularly the social comings and goings of the residents of a neighborhood closely modeled on Sneden's Landing, the clubby, cloistered, wealthy weekend getaway for many Manhattanites. Brennan repeats characters freely from story to story, which lends the book a richness it might not otherwise have, and she skewers with extraordinary precision and delicacy the foolishness her characters indulge in--knowingly sometimes, but mostly in complete oblivion to their idiocies.
Special treats in THE ROSE GARDEN include "The Divine Fireplace" (which features possibly the funniest conversation I've ever read between a wife and a woman she sees as a threat to her marriage); "The Stone Hot Water Bottle" and "The Servants' Dance," which brings into sharp focus the "Upstairs, Downstairs" observations at which she excels. These stories are deliciously readable--and re-readable.
In THE ROSE GARDEN, Brennan--an abundantly talented Irish native who spent many years living and writing in New York--examines most particularly the social comings and goings of the residents of a neighborhood closely modeled on Sneden's Landing, the clubby, cloistered, wealthy weekend getaway for many Manhattanites. Brennan repeats characters freely from story to story, which lends the book a richness it might not otherwise have, and she skewers with extraordinary precision and delicacy the foolishness her characters indulge in--knowingly sometimes, but mostly in complete oblivion to their idiocies.
Special treats in THE ROSE GARDEN include "The Divine Fireplace" (which features possibly the funniest conversation I've ever read between a wife and a woman she sees as a threat to her marriage); "The Stone Hot Water Bottle" and "The Servants' Dance," which brings into sharp focus the "Upstairs, Downstairs" observations at which she excels. These stories are deliciously readable--and re-readable.
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