They Came Like Swallows (Panther S.)
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Amazon.co.uk Review
In the Morison house the important goes unsaid and indirection is the operative mode--conversation stops where it should start and key terms such as fear, pain and pregnancy fail to be addressed. The younger son, an eight-year-old, passes his days deciphering adults' inaccessible discussions. "In this fashion they communicated with each other, out of knowledge and experience inaccessible to Bunny. By nods and silences. By a tired curve of his mother's mouth. By his father's measuring glance over the top of his spectacles". Bunny's older brother would rather escape to the outside world, and their father finds declaiming the day's headlines--the end of World War I and the onslaught of Spanish Influenza--far preferable to engagement. Only Elizabeth, their mother, is capable of holding the family together. The fifth main character in They Came Like Swallows is the house itself. Maxwell expresses the boys' reactions through this labile, interior landscape. Bunny finds the dining room can be "braced and ready for excitement"; later his brother realises "for the first time how still the house was, how full of waiting ... tense and expectant". Though war never makes it to Illinois, the flu changes all. First Bunny is stricken, and once he recovers Elizabeth, pregnant, dies from it. In quiet, piercing prose, William Maxwell's second novel, originally published in 1937, evokes the greatest of losses and the terrors of imagination. --Amazon.com
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"A beautiful novel and further reason, should we need one, as to why we should read everything this gentle craftsman wrote" Eileen Battersby, Irish Times; "Maxwell mines the ordinary and finds the extraordinary... the unspoken and things but faintly understood... This is a novel to read, reflect upon and read again. In a hundred years, if they read at all, others will do the same" Ross Leckie, The Times
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Why the spoiler?,
By Jadi (Manchester) - See all my reviews
This review is from: They Came Like Swallows (Hardcover)
Thoroughly enjoyed this evocative and lyrical novel,but how sad that Amazon's own review at the top of the page reveals a crucial part of the plot.Quite wrong.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Moving and timeless,
By A Customer
This review is from: They Came Like Swallows (Panther) (Paperback)
It's hard to believe this book was written in the 30s (USA)as it has a timeless feel to it. The book is written in 3 sections by 3 different narrators. It starts with the youngest boy in the family, followed by his older brother & finally the father of the 2. Each portrays their own perspective beautifully. We really feel their emotions. All 3 narratives centre around the narrator's relationship with the mother/wife and tell the family tale with a simplicity that creates an extremely moving work. The childhood evoked is magic. Recommended. It's a short read and best read at one sitting...
5.0 out of 5 stars
A master of the relationship novel,
By Book chatter (UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: They Came Like Swallows (Panther) (Paperback)
Having ready another of MAxwell's books recently I wanted to try more and wasn't disappointed. The copy I read had dense black print, which didn't make it visually appealing or easy on the eyes, but once you get embraced by the story you don't really notice that. Slit into three sections, and then chapters within these, it follows the relationships and events around one family - James, Elizabeth, Robert and Bunny. Set just after WW1 at the outbreak of the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic. Elizabeth is pregnant and as their lives unfold, you know what's going to happen, but want to find out what effect that will have. Three of the four of them get the flu and one dies, with life changing consequences. I'm still pondering the title as I'm not sure what this might allude to.
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