A review by flappermyrtle
Tea with Mr. Rochester by Frances Towers

4.0

This collection of short stories is excellent to curl up on the couch with a cup of tea. The little nuggets of everyday life, described in Towers´ lovely style, with sometimes striking metaphors and a certain emotional honesty made me want to know these characters, their friends, their society better. But that, of course, is the beauty of the short story form, if written well: you'd like to step beyond the story, know more, but have to make do with the story there is. I like the variety of female characters that appear in these stories, and the small ordinary motions they go through that are, in fact, major life events to them. I felt like an insider, another inhabitant of their houses, rather than an outsider looking into a window. Though it may be pointed out Towers uses the trope of the literary daughter quite a lot, I did not feel this was truly repetitive (and I read all the stories in two days). An absolute pity she had not written more before her death.