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    The Lone Pilgrim: Stories
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    The Lone Pilgrim: Stories
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    The Lone Pilgrim: Stories
    Ebook245 pages2 hours

    The Lone Pilgrim: Stories

    By Laurie Colwin

    4.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Thirteen tales of happiness, heartbreak, and desire from the acclaimed author of Home Cooking and Happy All the Time 

    In the title story of this elegant and insightful collection, a book illustrator meets the man of her dreams and struggles to say good-bye to her old self: the perfect houseguest who delighted in the dinner parties of her married friends and always went home alone. “A Mythological Subject” is the tale of an adulterous affair that arrives unexpected and unwanted, like a natural disaster, but is no mistake. In “The Smile Beneath the Smile,” Rachel Manheim, an ardent and intelligent young woman, must finally decide what to do about her unavailable lover. “A Girl Skating” is a delicate and haunting portrait of the unbridgeable divide between life and art, poetry and nature.

    The warmth, humor, and emotional honesty that characterize Laurie Colwin’s writing are on full display in The Lone Pilgrim. Each of these sublime stories is a celebration not just of Colwin’s remarkable talent, but of the beautiful mysteries of the human heart.

    This ebook features an illustrated biography of Laurie Colwin including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s estate.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateNov 18, 2014
    ISBN9781497673762
    Unavailable
    The Lone Pilgrim: Stories
    Author

    Laurie Colwin

    Laurie Colwin is the author of five novels: Happy All the Time; Family Happiness; Goodbye Without Leaving; Shine On, Bright and Dangerous Object; and A Big Storm Knocked It Over; three collections of short stories: Passion and Affect, Another Marvelous Thing, and The Lone Pilgrim; and two collections of essays: Home Cooking and More Home Cooking. She died in 1992.

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    Reviews for The Lone Pilgrim

    4.5/5

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    • 4/5
      There are thirteen stories within The Lone Pilgrim and they are as follows:
      1. The Lone Pilgrim - Children's book illustrator Paula Price is the perfect house guest, a student of human conduct. Vicariously, she lives through her hosts. But really, all she is doing is looking for love. I found her constant questioning "that was love, wasn't it?" endearing. Favorite line, "He had never so much as brushed my arm with his sleeve, and here we were locked in an embrace on an empty street" (p 14).
      2. The Boyish Lover - Jane and Cordy seem to be the perfect couple...until they get to know one another. Cordy comes from money but thinks Jane is too lavish. She lives paycheck to paycheck but knows how to live life to the fullest. It's this difference of prosperity that drives them apart. Favorite line, "Love, in its initial stages, takes care of everything" (p 25). True.
      3. Sentimental Memory - Unidentified twice divorced woman runs away to Scotland to figure out her life. She's only 31 so the idea of two fail marriages behind her is startling. In Scotland she meets a young Scottish student, home on holiday. He's madly in love with an Italian girl. Without realizing it, he teaches her about the meaning of love. Best lines (for you who know me you'll know why there are two): "The very least I could do was to catch up to myself" (p 43) and "I realized that there were times when the only appropriate response to Billy would have been to strangle him" (p 44).
      4. A Girl Skating - Bernadette Spaeth tells the creepy story of a famous poet/professor obsessed with her during her childhood and teen years. It's an ominous story with slightly sinister statements like, "I was the child he loved best and there was no escaping him" (p 51) and "There was no way I could duck him" (p 54).
      5. An Old Fashioned Story - Everyone knows a priss like this, "Elizabeth's friends came down with measles, chicken pox, and mumps, but Elizabeth considered Nelson her childhood disease" (p 60). Coming from a high-society culture Elizabeth Leopold was supposed to date only good boys (like Nelson; possibly only Nelson). She wanted anyone but Nelson.
      6. Intimacy - Martha Howard is a woman wrangling old emotions. William Sutherland had been a married man when he and Martha first had an affair. Now she's the married woman. Is it cheating when William's love came first? "For a moment they were simply lovers with a past between them" (p 89).
      7. Travel - Another story about relationships and marriage, "He knew if he wasn't around I would step back and run my life as if he never walked into it" (p 96).
      8. Delia's Father - Georgia Levy remembers her childhood friend's seductive and exotic father and how she ends up kissing him. I had to wonder how much childhood innocence was really lost when Georgia skipped school that day. Best line, "Children are a tribe, and childhood is there tribal home" (p 116).
      9. A Mythological Subject - Interesting tale about a cousin who falls in love with a colleague. "Of all the terrible things in life, living with a divided heart is the most terrible for an honorable person" (p 127).
      10. St Anthony of the Desert - Another story about a relationship gone awry except this one has a very subtle twist. He's separated and wants to give his wife another chance. She only mentions it once so if you aren't paying attention you might miss it, "After all, no one knew I was married" (p 145). Best line from the story, "In ordinary times, devils are ordinary" (p 142).
      11. The Smile Beneath the Smile - Another story about a married individual having an affair with a single one. One pines away for the other. Favorite line, "If you live in a city, you cannot avoid inadvertently opening your life to strangers in public places" (p 154).
      12. The Achieve of, the Mastery of the Thing - a professor's wife is having an affair with marijuana. Interesting tidbit: the title of the story comes from a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem. That's cool.
      13. Family Happiness - Yet another story about a married individual (Polly) having an affair with a single one. This time there is the burden of a quirky family. Her love life consists of one man who makes her life normal while the other man makes her life natural. Polly's boyfriend always gets her name right while her family is always nicknaming. Lines I liked, "The family doted on her, but no one paid much attention to her" (p 191) and "I like my mole-like life with you" (p 206).
      There is a pattern to Colwin's stories and a common theme. Family and relationships (and someone always running off to Paris).
    • 4/5
      An elegant collection of stories, both funny and profound.
    • 5/5
      Laurie Colwin is one of my favorite authors. She describes the physical world in a lovely way, from the color of the sky to a baked apple sitting on the window sill with a full moon outside. She also is very witty, and her books are consistently upbeat. When I picked up my new york times and saw her photo under the obituaries section when she was only 48 it was a sad day for me and all of her fans.