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Strangers
With uncompromising clarity, in her careful, delicate prose, Antonia White looks at the pains and joys of growing up, of falling in and out of love, the borderlands between love and loneliness, sanity and madness, belief and the loss of faith. First published in 1954, Strangers is here extended to include her autobiographical story, 'Surprise Visit'; together they present some of Antonia White's finest writing.
173 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1964
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155 people want to read
About the author
Antonia White
41 books46 followersAntonia White was born as Eirine Botting to parents Cecil and Christine Botting in 1899. She later took her mother's maiden name, White.
In 1921 she was married to the first of her three husbands. The marriage was annulled only 2 years later, and reportedly was never consummated. She immediately fell in love again with a man named Robert, who was an officer in the Scots Guards. They never married, and their relationship was brief but intense, which led to her experiencing a severe mental breakdown. She was committed to Bethlem, a public asylum, where she spent the next year of her life. She described her breakdown as a period of “mania”. After she left hospital, she spent four years participating in Freudian studies. She struggled the rest of her life with mental illness which she referred to as “The Beast”.
Her second marriage was to a man named Eric Earnshaw Smith, but this marriage ended in divorce. By the age of 30, she had been married 3 times. During her second marriage, she had fallen in love with two men. One was Rudolph 'Silas' Glossop. The other was a man named Tom Hopkinson, a copywriter and S.G. who is described as “a tall handsome young man with a slightly melancholy charm”. She had trouble deciding whom she should marry following her divorce, and she married Hopkinson in 1930. She had two daughters, Lyndall Hopkinson and Susan Chitty, who have both written autobiographical books about their difficult relationship with their mother.
Her career as a writer seems to have been driven by the desire to cope with a sense of failure, resulting initially from her first attempt at writing, and with mental illness. She was quoted as saying, “The old terrors always return and often, with them, a feeling of such paralyzing lack of self-confidence that I have to take earlier books of mine off their shelf just to prove to myself that I actually wrote them and they were actually printed, bound, and read. I find that numbers of writers experience these same miseries over their work and do not, as is so often supposed, enjoy the process. "Creative joy" is something I haven't felt since I was fourteen and don't expect to feel again."
With regard to the content of her writing, White remarked, “My novels and short stories are mainly about ordinary people who become involved in rather extraordinary situations. I do not mean in sensational adventures but in rather odd and difficult personal relationships largely due to their family background and their incomplete understanding of their own natures. I use both Catholic and non-Catholic characters and am particularly interested in the conflicts that arise between them and in the influences they have on each other.”
Bibliography:
Frost in May (first published 1933)
The Lost Traveller (first published 1950)
The Sugar House (first published 1952)
Beyond the Glass (first published 1954)
Strangers (first published 1954)
The Hound and the Falcon: The Story of a Reconversion to Catholic Faith (first published 1965)
Minka and Curdy (children's book, first published 1957)
Living with Minka and Curdy (children's book, first published 1970)
Play: Three In a Room: Comedy in 3 Acts (first published 1947)
In 1921 she was married to the first of her three husbands. The marriage was annulled only 2 years later, and reportedly was never consummated. She immediately fell in love again with a man named Robert, who was an officer in the Scots Guards. They never married, and their relationship was brief but intense, which led to her experiencing a severe mental breakdown. She was committed to Bethlem, a public asylum, where she spent the next year of her life. She described her breakdown as a period of “mania”. After she left hospital, she spent four years participating in Freudian studies. She struggled the rest of her life with mental illness which she referred to as “The Beast”.
Her second marriage was to a man named Eric Earnshaw Smith, but this marriage ended in divorce. By the age of 30, she had been married 3 times. During her second marriage, she had fallen in love with two men. One was Rudolph 'Silas' Glossop. The other was a man named Tom Hopkinson, a copywriter and S.G. who is described as “a tall handsome young man with a slightly melancholy charm”. She had trouble deciding whom she should marry following her divorce, and she married Hopkinson in 1930. She had two daughters, Lyndall Hopkinson and Susan Chitty, who have both written autobiographical books about their difficult relationship with their mother.
Her career as a writer seems to have been driven by the desire to cope with a sense of failure, resulting initially from her first attempt at writing, and with mental illness. She was quoted as saying, “The old terrors always return and often, with them, a feeling of such paralyzing lack of self-confidence that I have to take earlier books of mine off their shelf just to prove to myself that I actually wrote them and they were actually printed, bound, and read. I find that numbers of writers experience these same miseries over their work and do not, as is so often supposed, enjoy the process. "Creative joy" is something I haven't felt since I was fourteen and don't expect to feel again."
With regard to the content of her writing, White remarked, “My novels and short stories are mainly about ordinary people who become involved in rather extraordinary situations. I do not mean in sensational adventures but in rather odd and difficult personal relationships largely due to their family background and their incomplete understanding of their own natures. I use both Catholic and non-Catholic characters and am particularly interested in the conflicts that arise between them and in the influences they have on each other.”
Bibliography:
Frost in May (first published 1933)
The Lost Traveller (first published 1950)
The Sugar House (first published 1952)
Beyond the Glass (first published 1954)
Strangers (first published 1954)
The Hound and the Falcon: The Story of a Reconversion to Catholic Faith (first published 1965)
Minka and Curdy (children's book, first published 1957)
Living with Minka and Curdy (children's book, first published 1970)
Play: Three In a Room: Comedy in 3 Acts (first published 1947)
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
September 29, 2025
I read the Saint from this collection. Read in Black Water 2 anthology together with the Short Story Club.
I was relieved that it was not a preachy story, as I was expecting by the title and the author
's biography. She was in a convent school for some years. Anyway, the story's message seems to be: Do not judge a book by its cover, or Saints might hide under unpleasant people. It was ok, not more.
I was relieved that it was not a preachy story, as I was expecting by the title and the author
's biography. She was in a convent school for some years. Anyway, the story's message seems to be: Do not judge a book by its cover, or Saints might hide under unpleasant people. It was ok, not more.
October 5, 2025
Review of The Saint from this collection.
Beware echo-chambers
This concerns a class of twenty girls, around ten years old, at a Catholic school, staffed by nuns. They’re pious children, and enthusiastically curious about things that will deepen their faith, rather than challenge it. Saints are especially fascinating to them.
Despite the setting, this neither promotes the Catholic faith, nor exposes the faults of institutional religion. It’s a gentle and very human story that applies to any age and any context, including the media we consume and people we read, listen to, and communicate with.
Image: Comic graph of “Political Discussions on the Facebook”, where extreme views get lots of likes in echo chambers and cause flame wars in comments, but “The Valley of Open-Mindedness” gets very little response. (Source)
Consensus - in any realm - can blind us to the truth.
Confirmation bias is strong.
“As the nuns intoned the Amen, a white butterfly flew up out of the grave, hung for a minute so that we could all see it, then spiralled away, with a flight as purposeful as a bird's, right up into the blue air.”
Just an ordinary butterfly, or the white dove of the Holy Spirit?
The other message is not to judge a book by its cover.
(But we don’t, artists and designers will be out of jobs.)
Short story club
I read this in Black Water 2: More Tales of the Fantastic, by Alberto Manguel, from which I’m reading one story a week with The Short Story Club, starting 24 March 2025.
You can read this story in the group.
You can join the group here.
Beware echo-chambers
This concerns a class of twenty girls, around ten years old, at a Catholic school, staffed by nuns. They’re pious children, and enthusiastically curious about things that will deepen their faith, rather than challenge it. Saints are especially fascinating to them.
Despite the setting, this neither promotes the Catholic faith, nor exposes the faults of institutional religion. It’s a gentle and very human story that applies to any age and any context, including the media we consume and people we read, listen to, and communicate with.
Image: Comic graph of “Political Discussions on the Facebook”, where extreme views get lots of likes in echo chambers and cause flame wars in comments, but “The Valley of Open-Mindedness” gets very little response. (Source)
Consensus - in any realm - can blind us to the truth.
Confirmation bias is strong.
“As the nuns intoned the Amen, a white butterfly flew up out of the grave, hung for a minute so that we could all see it, then spiralled away, with a flight as purposeful as a bird's, right up into the blue air.”
Just an ordinary butterfly, or the white dove of the Holy Spirit?
The other message is not to judge a book by its cover.
(But we don’t, artists and designers will be out of jobs.)
Short story club
I read this in Black Water 2: More Tales of the Fantastic, by Alberto Manguel, from which I’m reading one story a week with The Short Story Club, starting 24 March 2025.
You can read this story in the group.
You can join the group here.
June 7, 2020
This is a collection of eight short stories and two poems. Like all White’s writing there is a strong autobiographical element. These are more like brief fragments rather than extended stories: she did this in her novels starting with Frost in May. The general focus of the stories are the issues that White focuses on as a rule. These include religion, Roman Catholicism to be specific and convent life. Mental health is central to a number of the stories and some reflect White’s time in an asylum in the 1920s. White had a number of terms she used for her own mental ill health: “neurasthenia”, “accidie”, “the beast” and “a mental crash”. She had several years of Freudian analysis and fell out with and went back to the Church. The stories that relate to White’s mental health are powerful, especially The House of Clouds where she describes some of her experiences:
“The nurses caught and dragged her along a passage. The passage was like a long room: it had a shiny wooden floor with double iron tracks in it like the tracks of a model railway. A young man with a signet ring was bending over her, holding a funnel with a long tube attached. He forced the tube down her nose and began to pour some liquid down her throat.”
Surprise Visit is also quite striking. It concerns a 38 year old woman, well respected and in an important job in publishing. In her early 20s she had spent some time in an asylum. She stumbles across the asylum on a lunchtime walk, it is now the Imperial War Museum. The story describes her reactions as she decides to go in. White is good at setting a scene:
“Sad men in Norfolk jackets dropped in at intervals, poured themselves out cups of strong tea, drank them hastily, and departed as if to catch imaginary trains. A waitress peeled off the checked cloths and exposed the tables in their iron nakedness; the plain, unvarnished clock ticked on, the scum settled in my half-empty cup, and still Miss Hislop talked.”
There is a good deal to interest. The Rich Woman has a gothic, malevolent and slightly ghostly edge. Relationships with men are always fraught with tension and lack of understanding. In her biographical quartet of novels White uses a quote from Blake which is apposite here:
"Why should I be bound to thee/ Oh my lovely mirtle tree?"
There is always a sense of looseness and instability in marriage, reflecting White’s own experience. White battles with female identity and is always interesting. She is a middle class Catholic Englishwoman and her stories reflect that, but her depiction of mental health and the asylum system is powerful and holds the attention.
“The nurses caught and dragged her along a passage. The passage was like a long room: it had a shiny wooden floor with double iron tracks in it like the tracks of a model railway. A young man with a signet ring was bending over her, holding a funnel with a long tube attached. He forced the tube down her nose and began to pour some liquid down her throat.”
Surprise Visit is also quite striking. It concerns a 38 year old woman, well respected and in an important job in publishing. In her early 20s she had spent some time in an asylum. She stumbles across the asylum on a lunchtime walk, it is now the Imperial War Museum. The story describes her reactions as she decides to go in. White is good at setting a scene:
“Sad men in Norfolk jackets dropped in at intervals, poured themselves out cups of strong tea, drank them hastily, and departed as if to catch imaginary trains. A waitress peeled off the checked cloths and exposed the tables in their iron nakedness; the plain, unvarnished clock ticked on, the scum settled in my half-empty cup, and still Miss Hislop talked.”
There is a good deal to interest. The Rich Woman has a gothic, malevolent and slightly ghostly edge. Relationships with men are always fraught with tension and lack of understanding. In her biographical quartet of novels White uses a quote from Blake which is apposite here:
"Why should I be bound to thee/ Oh my lovely mirtle tree?"
There is always a sense of looseness and instability in marriage, reflecting White’s own experience. White battles with female identity and is always interesting. She is a middle class Catholic Englishwoman and her stories reflect that, but her depiction of mental health and the asylum system is powerful and holds the attention.
May 29, 2025
This collection was first published the same year as the last of Antonia White’s quartet of autobiographical novels, Beyond the Glass (1954). Its stories range from 1928 to 1949, and the Virago edition includes a previously uncollected story from 1964.
I immediately recognized the short story "The House of Clouds" (1928) as a precursor to one of the chapters in Beyond the Glass. In my review of the latter, I wrote: “The one chapter completely devoted to [her] hallucinations, and other sensory experiences I have no words for, is so impressively done, it’s almost hard to read.” It’s exciting to recognize how she developed a very good short story into a brilliant chapter.
The story leading off this collection “The Moment of Truth” (1941) is just as brilliant in its depiction of mental illness, and its effects on the character’s sense of self and on her marriage. The final story, “Surprise Visit,” perhaps illustrates White’s fears of what it might be like if her own mental illness returns. She's a fearless writer.
“The Saint” (1928) seems to be set in the same convent-school world of her first novel, Frost in May (1933), but from a first-person-plural perspective and written in a humorous vein, unlike the novel. The title story reminded me of Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour.” And “The Rich Woman,” with its creepy atmosphere and the titular character a conniving enabler read to me as a Beauty-and-the-Beast-tale. (The rich woman is actually a Christian Scientist.)
This is a worthy collection, especially for anyone who’s read White’s novels and wants more. All that’s left for me now is her nonfiction.
I immediately recognized the short story "The House of Clouds" (1928) as a precursor to one of the chapters in Beyond the Glass. In my review of the latter, I wrote: “The one chapter completely devoted to [her] hallucinations, and other sensory experiences I have no words for, is so impressively done, it’s almost hard to read.” It’s exciting to recognize how she developed a very good short story into a brilliant chapter.
The story leading off this collection “The Moment of Truth” (1941) is just as brilliant in its depiction of mental illness, and its effects on the character’s sense of self and on her marriage. The final story, “Surprise Visit,” perhaps illustrates White’s fears of what it might be like if her own mental illness returns. She's a fearless writer.
“The Saint” (1928) seems to be set in the same convent-school world of her first novel, Frost in May (1933), but from a first-person-plural perspective and written in a humorous vein, unlike the novel. The title story reminded me of Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour.” And “The Rich Woman,” with its creepy atmosphere and the titular character a conniving enabler read to me as a Beauty-and-the-Beast-tale. (The rich woman is actually a Christian Scientist.)
This is a worthy collection, especially for anyone who’s read White’s novels and wants more. All that’s left for me now is her nonfiction.
October 28, 2025
(This is a review of only one story, "The Saint")
3★
When they learned she was dying of consumption, their attitude was a little unusual.
Kids are harsh, right? And they were particularly harsh on one of the other nuns who helped to take over.
Needless to say, Mother Lucilla is spared the stake, which is not a spoiler.
Small, martyred bites - I can just see her blush as she chokes her bread down.
This is one of the stories from the Goodreads Short Story Club, which you are welcome to join. Good discussions and a nice sense of camaraderie. There is always a link for members to a free read or download of each story, so you don't have to buy any more books... unless you absolutely must, of course! (recreational hazard 😊)
Link to the Goodreads Short Story Club
3★
"Children, as you know, are supposed to have a special power of discerning saints."No, I didn't know, but I do know that kids can rev themselves up to believe almost anything. These children didn't conspire to promote one of their own, but in their convent school, they were so fond of one teacher, they were certain she was a living saint. Girls and gossip.
When they learned she was dying of consumption, their attitude was a little unusual.
"I think we were just a little disappointed that Mother Lucilla was dying in her bed and not at the stake."
Kids are harsh, right? And they were particularly harsh on one of the other nuns who helped to take over.
"Everything about her was unromantic. Her habit was the shabbiest in the convent. Her rosary was broken in three places and mended with wire. She suffered from titanic colds that made her look plainer than ever. And, to crown all, her Christian name was Keziah."When one of the girls decided not to eat her afternoon snack of bread and jam, as a way of doing penance to pray for Mother Lucilla, Mother McDowell (Keziah) scolded her for wasting her food and said she should make an act of humility instead.
"'That would be a real penance.' Charlotte turned crimson and began to eat her bread in small, martyred bites."
Needless to say, Mother Lucilla is spared the stake, which is not a spoiler.
Small, martyred bites - I can just see her blush as she chokes her bread down.
This is one of the stories from the Goodreads Short Story Club, which you are welcome to join. Good discussions and a nice sense of camaraderie. There is always a link for members to a free read or download of each story, so you don't have to buy any more books... unless you absolutely must, of course! (recreational hazard 😊)
Link to the Goodreads Short Story Club
February 4, 2017
While the back of the cover and the book description states that there are seven short stories in this collection, there are actually eight. And then two poems. But who's keeping track?
In any case, these stories are such delightfully frustrating stories to read. They all deal with womanhood in some manner, though not in a hokey way. In rather a realistic way, specifically for the time in which they were written (all prior to the 1960s). We see repressed female characters, whether by religion (the Catholic church) or in their relationships or even by their own sanity.
Normally with short collections of stories like this, I like to write my review about each of the stories. I had that intention here as well, but realized quickly that the stories are all rather similar in tone and/or subject matter. I would even normally be annoyed by that, but White managed to write them all from a fresh perspective, and never did I feel I was reading the same story again. Her characters are all very different from one another, even if some of them deal with similar issues. It was that variety that kept me going.
As I read, I was frequently reminded of other fantastic writers such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman in The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories, Kate Chopin in The Awakening, and quite a few things by Virginia Woolf. Think subject matter rather than writing style. I even found myself remembering pieces of Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. If the best you can come up with when you look at those authors and titles is that they are all women who wrote stories and books about women, then you don't need to be on this page because you're clearly missing the point. Those of you who have read the different books/stories, and know the relationships between the characters and what they've been through, then you'll understand what I'm talking about here.
Prior to this I was familiar with the author's name, but was not aware until I did a little research (aka, Wikipedia search and reading of the introduction to this edition) that Antonia White had experience with mental illness herself. She was sent to a public asylum in the mid-1920s after a "brief but intense" relationship with an officer in the Scots Guards after the collapse of her first marriage. She sounded like an interesting woman, and I plan on reading more of her writing as soon as I can get my hands on copies.
Highly recommended to readers who appreciate the authors mentioned already in this review, and then come back and let me know if White made you think about any others that I failed to mention here. I'm not sure why Antonia White is not as well known as the other women I've mentioned, her stories pack just as much of a punch as some of their writings, but I'm glad at least Virago Modern Classics has published them so they haven't fallen completely into obscurity.
In any case, these stories are such delightfully frustrating stories to read. They all deal with womanhood in some manner, though not in a hokey way. In rather a realistic way, specifically for the time in which they were written (all prior to the 1960s). We see repressed female characters, whether by religion (the Catholic church) or in their relationships or even by their own sanity.
Normally with short collections of stories like this, I like to write my review about each of the stories. I had that intention here as well, but realized quickly that the stories are all rather similar in tone and/or subject matter. I would even normally be annoyed by that, but White managed to write them all from a fresh perspective, and never did I feel I was reading the same story again. Her characters are all very different from one another, even if some of them deal with similar issues. It was that variety that kept me going.
As I read, I was frequently reminded of other fantastic writers such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman in The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories, Kate Chopin in The Awakening, and quite a few things by Virginia Woolf. Think subject matter rather than writing style. I even found myself remembering pieces of Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. If the best you can come up with when you look at those authors and titles is that they are all women who wrote stories and books about women, then you don't need to be on this page because you're clearly missing the point. Those of you who have read the different books/stories, and know the relationships between the characters and what they've been through, then you'll understand what I'm talking about here.
Prior to this I was familiar with the author's name, but was not aware until I did a little research (aka, Wikipedia search and reading of the introduction to this edition) that Antonia White had experience with mental illness herself. She was sent to a public asylum in the mid-1920s after a "brief but intense" relationship with an officer in the Scots Guards after the collapse of her first marriage. She sounded like an interesting woman, and I plan on reading more of her writing as soon as I can get my hands on copies.
Highly recommended to readers who appreciate the authors mentioned already in this review, and then come back and let me know if White made you think about any others that I failed to mention here. I'm not sure why Antonia White is not as well known as the other women I've mentioned, her stories pack just as much of a punch as some of their writings, but I'm glad at least Virago Modern Classics has published them so they haven't fallen completely into obscurity.
November 11, 2018
Wonderful prose, would be a good introduction to her works.
Read
October 9, 2016I rather like how Hermione Lee, in her Introduction, frames Antonio White's aesthetic problem :: "The pull between the controlling writer, digging up her past as though she were her own analyst, and the unredeemed, 'untreated' self in the fiction, unable to make coherent shape of, or distance herself from her state of mind, is characteristic. It's a strain which is both risky (the story may fail to get itself written at all) and fruitful, in that it informs the best of Antonia White's work."
And so my reading through my growing shelf of Viragos begins on a reassuring and encouraging note. Additionally and specifically now looking forward to White's tetrology :: Frost in May.
And so my reading through my growing shelf of Viragos begins on a reassuring and encouraging note. Additionally and specifically now looking forward to White's tetrology :: Frost in May.
February 20, 2018
Having heard a lot about Antonia White, I was intrigued to read this selection of her short stories. Mostly, they deal with depression, love, heartache and mental health problems, and a couple I found quite frightening (I know White used her own experiences as a basis for the stories). The stories are strange, disjointed, dreamlike and peculiar. I will hopefully have more luck with a full length novel of hers.
September 29, 2025
Review of The Saint from this collection:
An enjoyable short story that brings the reader into the world of a group of girls at a convent school.
Based on the light humour, the understated skewering of organized religion, and the fresh deft prose, I'm giving this one 5 stars.
Read as part of the Short Story Club here on Goodreads.
An enjoyable short story that brings the reader into the world of a group of girls at a convent school.
Based on the light humour, the understated skewering of organized religion, and the fresh deft prose, I'm giving this one 5 stars.
Read as part of the Short Story Club here on Goodreads.
June 3, 2011
Collection of 8 short stories, mainly autobiographical. The author is at her best when writing about the 2 things that seemed to loom largest in her life - her on/off relationship with the Catholic Church, and the time she spent in an asylum as a young woman. Well worth reading.
July 18, 2015
Interesting collection of eight short stories that closely examine the emotional and mental lives of its female main characters. One of the most vivid is "The House of Clouds," written in 1928, that gives a hallucinatory, yet objective description of the treatment of a mentally ill woman. Two of the stories rely on Gothic settings and mysterious women to drive the plot forward. In the first, "The Moment of Truth," the proprietress of a hotel presents herself as a seer of sorts and she attempts to take care of Charlotte, the main character, as if she has psychic powers. However, Charlotte may not be a reliable narrator. The second, "The Rich Woman," is not as gripping as most of the others, but it realistically portrays another kind of mental illness--that of a manipulative narcissistic. White's characters have a tenuous grasp of reality and it's fascinating to get into their heads through these stories.
May 20, 2025
2.5 stars? Elements of Jean Rhys, Sylvia Plath, and Shirley Jackson thematically but without their artful touch. Often dismal and grotesque vignettes revolving around two pillars of White's life: 1) a bad experience in Catholic boarding school and 2) mental illness (which she called "The Beast").
"You see, I only cared for the real old mystic side of it, and you don't get that by going to church and just being an ordinary Catholic... That's the life I want... the real old medieval thing... mystical substitution and all that" (The Exile, 103-105).
Antonia White was expelled from convent school as a teenager and wrestled her entire life with feelings of failure. She once said, "'Creative joy' is something I haven't felt since I was fourteen and don't expect to feel again." In 1922-1923, she was a resident at Bethlem, a psychiatric hospital in London. White married three times and was one of the main translators of Colette into English and a close friend of Djuna Barnes.
"Religion. He had been so kind to her. Of course he had never understood her religion, never understood the sense it gave her of power, of swiftness, of lightness. In the midst of a dull party she would be conscious of wings folded inside her. That was it. That was her exquisite secret. She was able to fly. How did Jim live without some private flame?" (Strangers, 116).
I am glad that I persevered and kept reading. The first two narratives almost deterred me, but I found "The Saint" to be an expertly-executed short story and "The Rich Woman" to conjure a very Gothic Rebecca-like atmosphere. I was lured in by the Tamara de Lempicka cover when I spotted this used copy at Tills, but it's not a text I will hang onto or heartily recommend.
"You see, I only cared for the real old mystic side of it, and you don't get that by going to church and just being an ordinary Catholic... That's the life I want... the real old medieval thing... mystical substitution and all that" (The Exile, 103-105).
Antonia White was expelled from convent school as a teenager and wrestled her entire life with feelings of failure. She once said, "'Creative joy' is something I haven't felt since I was fourteen and don't expect to feel again." In 1922-1923, she was a resident at Bethlem, a psychiatric hospital in London. White married three times and was one of the main translators of Colette into English and a close friend of Djuna Barnes.
"Religion. He had been so kind to her. Of course he had never understood her religion, never understood the sense it gave her of power, of swiftness, of lightness. In the midst of a dull party she would be conscious of wings folded inside her. That was it. That was her exquisite secret. She was able to fly. How did Jim live without some private flame?" (Strangers, 116).
I am glad that I persevered and kept reading. The first two narratives almost deterred me, but I found "The Saint" to be an expertly-executed short story and "The Rich Woman" to conjure a very Gothic Rebecca-like atmosphere. I was lured in by the Tamara de Lempicka cover when I spotted this used copy at Tills, but it's not a text I will hang onto or heartily recommend.
January 16, 2024
I think it was me but I thought this book was quite boring at times… I would speed up in some places but then stay the same for a while, I will read it again some day but not anytime soon
also definitely only read this because the author’s name is also Antonia… literally the only reason
also definitely only read this because the author’s name is also Antonia… literally the only reason
September 5, 2020
Some of the stories in Strangers was a little more taxing to read than other stories but overall I really enjoyed each and every one. Although some of the intricacies of practising Catholicism are somewhat lost on me (it's a theme that pops up often), I found myself invested in each unique narrators voice.
It does seem particularly surprising to me that I haven't found any mention in reviews of the quite blatant sexual overtones used when describing female relationships in several of the stories; namely Sister Prisca in 'The Exile' and Belle Chandler in 'The Rich Woman'. This seems like it would be highly unconventional for a book published in 1954.
I would most certainly read another Antonia White book presented the opportunity.
It does seem particularly surprising to me that I haven't found any mention in reviews of the quite blatant sexual overtones used when describing female relationships in several of the stories; namely Sister Prisca in 'The Exile' and Belle Chandler in 'The Rich Woman'. This seems like it would be highly unconventional for a book published in 1954.
I would most certainly read another Antonia White book presented the opportunity.
April 25, 2021
A short, easy collection of stories that are heavy on Antonia White’s favorite themes of Catholicism and insanity. I recommend this over her Frost in May series which was a bit tedious. Perhaps because I’ve read a lot of her in the past year, my favorite two stories were the ones that diverged from her favorite themes and had no madness or religion: “Aunt Rose‘s Revenge” and “The Rich Woman.”
May 27, 2021
Only read a couple of the stories but didn’t find them too interesting.
December 3, 2024
I enjoyed this collection of Antonia White's short stories, especially the first, A Moment of Truth.
December 27, 2025
Only "The Saint," read for GR short story group
+++++++++++++++++++
Rather dull morality tale with nuns and miracles, set at a Catholic girls school...yawn.
+++++++++++++++++++
Rather dull morality tale with nuns and miracles, set at a Catholic girls school...yawn.
January 11, 2015
My final read of 2014 was Strangers, a collection of short stories which take as their theme; those boundaries between love and loneliness, madness and sanity, growing up and faith.
This slight volume of only just over 170 pages contains eight – largely autobiographical stories and a few pieces of poetry. My previous experience of Antonia White was in her novels that make up her famous quartet which begins with Frost in White, so I already knew I enjoyed her writing. Having completed that quartet of brilliant novels Antonia White produced no further novels, but these stories very much continue in the same vein, the themes recognisable to readers of those novels.
Full review: https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2015/...
This slight volume of only just over 170 pages contains eight – largely autobiographical stories and a few pieces of poetry. My previous experience of Antonia White was in her novels that make up her famous quartet which begins with Frost in White, so I already knew I enjoyed her writing. Having completed that quartet of brilliant novels Antonia White produced no further novels, but these stories very much continue in the same vein, the themes recognisable to readers of those novels.
Full review: https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2015/...
August 10, 2008
I really enjoy this set of short stories because they provide an alternative to the Clara trilogy for which White is most famously known.
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