Word: talese
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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A mug shot, two gravestones, a smile. The trial can be reduced to these emblems. Or to entries in a specialized gazetteer: Rockingham, Bundy, Brentwood. A bestiary: barking dog, white Bronco, blond Kato. Names on a list: Marcia and Johnnie, Darden and Shapiro, Fung, Lee, Scheck, Ito, Fuhrman. A weird...
Alcott was such an author. In the 1860s, she published dozens of tales under the pseudonym of M. Barnard.
Four such tales are reprinted in this collection: "Behind A Mask," "Pauline's Passion and Punishment," "The Mysterious Key" and "The Abbot's Ghost."
Though no one doubts the historical value of these stories, their content places them with Danielle Steele and Sidney Sheldon as great beach reads. Alcott herself put it best in her journal of 1862: "I enjoy romancing to suit myself, and though my tales are silly, they are not bad...
There's something abrupt about the way these ladies are brought forward one by one to tell their often archetypal tales of dreams betrayed. But there's also a nice tartness, a lack of self-pity, in their telling. Quilt is a patchwork, but when it's finally stitched together...