A review by maedo
Flowering Judas and Other Stories by Katherine Anne Porter
4.0
If you happen to see a photo of Katherine Anne Porter looking all regal and made-up (and maybe a little sassy) before reading her work for the first time, you might expect to find a world like Fitzgerald’s: garden parties, outwardly delicate women and wayward men, rendered all precise and jewel-like. And a lot of her stories here do focus on relationships between husbands and wives, albeit of a different class and place than Fitzgerald’s men and women.
But while Flowering Judas definitely shares the hopeless wistfulness for the better past of, say, The Great Gatsby, her work also has a surprisingly sinister edge to it. Check out “Rope” or “That Tree,” and you’ll see what I mean. Not by coincidence, those were my two favorite stories of this collection. KAP is, to borrow a word from Tyra Banks, fierce. And not just because she sort of looks like a model. (I’m pretty sure that this duality of outward classically feminine beauty/inward fire in the blood is a great deal of why I’m obsessed with her. In addition to how fantastic her writing is, of course.)
Four stars for this book only because the last story, “Hacienda,” was a total slog of boring. It was also the longest story in the collection, clocking in at over 60 pages. So boo to that.
But while Flowering Judas definitely shares the hopeless wistfulness for the better past of, say, The Great Gatsby, her work also has a surprisingly sinister edge to it. Check out “Rope” or “That Tree,” and you’ll see what I mean. Not by coincidence, those were my two favorite stories of this collection. KAP is, to borrow a word from Tyra Banks, fierce. And not just because she sort of looks like a model. (I’m pretty sure that this duality of outward classically feminine beauty/inward fire in the blood is a great deal of why I’m obsessed with her. In addition to how fantastic her writing is, of course.)
Four stars for this book only because the last story, “Hacienda,” was a total slog of boring. It was also the longest story in the collection, clocking in at over 60 pages. So boo to that.