Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger

November 23, 2009
Smith slips effortlessly into the voices of her funny, smarter-than-they-look characters in her latest collection (after News of the Spirit
), containing a handful of new works among some old favorites. In “Toastmaster,” a family's dinner outing is parsed from the point of view of a brainy 11-year-old who sees through the motivations of his flaky mother and demonstrates his powers of observation when a group of joking, drunken men enter the restaurant. Similarly, “Big Girl” allows an overweight wife who has sacrificed everything for her awful husband to tell her story while attaining the ultimate emancipation. Each tale is beautifully honed and captures in subtle detail and gentle irony the essential humanity of characters who might initially strike the reader as superficial or unsympathetic. “House Tour,” for instance, finds a cynical wife and mother contemplating her possible alcoholism when her house is overrun by an endearing group of similarly life-worn but irrepressible women who mistake her house for one on their home tour. Other tales about indomitable wives and mothers will be familiar to Smith's fans and round out this thoroughly enjoyable collection.

January 15, 2010
Southern storyteller Smith ("The Last Girls") here collects 14 storiesseven new ones, seven from previous collections, and all filled with sorrow and humanity. Comparisons to Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor are not far off the mark, for these stories have the careful, handcrafted feel of those masters. Many look at aging women and their mortality. In the title story, for instance, the yearnings and weight of all the past years are palpable as the daughters of Lolly Darcy earnestly discuss what to do with their mother, who is clearly slipping. In "The Happy Memories Club," former English teacher Alice Scully, now a resident of a nursing home and confined to a wheelchair, resists her little writing group's dictum that only happy memories be read aloud. VERDICT This is a fiction writer whose work puts her at the top of her game in the crowded field of modern Southern writers.Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., VA

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2009
Prolific novelist Smith (On Agate Hill, 2006, etc.) offers 14 stories, most circling issues of class in the contemporary South.

"Bob, A Dog," about a sweet woman dumped by her educated husband, sets the tone: Highfalutin' Yankees and earthy Southerners don't mix well. In"Ultima Thule," the Dixie-born wife is the transgressor, betraying her oversensitive Northern husband. Not only Yankees but also bourgeois Southerners lack the spirit of Smith's hardscrabble heroines, who fight constant battles to survive and maintain their dignity. In"Big Girl," even the arresting authorities sympathize with Dee Ann, who has committed a crime"in the name of love" for a worthless man. Each heroine with bad taste but a heart of gold seems charmingly colorful on her own—readers understand why the businessman in"Intensive Care" sacrifices his respectability for a waitress who offers the joyful love his buttoned-down wife can't—but lumped together, the women edge toward stereotype. The town of Salt Lick is full of them in"Between the Lines." The clueless narrator of"The Southern Cross" is too clichd and lame-brained to take seriously as she describes a weekend cruise with her married boss. And"Fried Chicken," about a murderer's pathetic mother, reads like an exercise in politically correct sentimentality. However, Smith can strike deep. In"House Tour," both Yankee academics and their elderly Southern visitors defy stereotypes and expectations. The previously unpublished"Stevie and Mama" is the volume's standout. A woman discovers that her husband, the love of her life, may have had an affair years ago. The hard-earned clarity she reaches while deciding whether to confront him is nuanced and true. After this freshly detailed, deeply satisfying work, the cute twist ending of the final story, concerning the widowed Mrs. Darcy and children who should take her more seriously, is quite a letdown.

Always colorful, sometimes predictable and at its best profoundly moving.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

Starred review from December 1, 2009
This wonderful writer is a readers-advisory librarians dream. Short stories, ordinarily a relatively hard sell to library patrons, are a different animal when they are Lee Smiths short stories. In a very hospitable way of talking, reminiscent of Ellen Gilchrists style in her delicious writing, Smith offers stories that deliver an irresistible one-two punch. The first punch isagain, like Gilchristthe humor that fills every page. She doesnt poke fun at the ordinary folks who stock her fiction but gets us to see, by their plights and successes, the universal absurdity in their struggles to attain love and significance. The second punch is the meaningfulness of every story. All of us, in different garb, appear at some point in a Smith story. This collection contains 14 pieces, 7 new and 7 that have seen publication in previous collections. Bob, a Dog leads off, and it shows Smith in absolute control of her material; the eponymous character serves as a metaphor for freedom. The title story is entertaining and riveting from its first line, It was cocktail time. The most beautiful story is the very short Toastmaster, an imaginative narrative from the point of view of a bookish little boy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)