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Over by the River and Other Stories
Twelve stories, representing thirty years of Maxwell's work, trace the lines of attraction between people and between people and places, in New York, the Midwest, and France, and the weakening of those lines.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
242 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
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84 people want to read
About the author
William Maxwell
120 books361 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
William Keepers Maxwell Jr. was an American novelist, and fiction editor at the New Yorker. He studied at the University of Illinois and Harvard University. Maxwell wrote six highly acclaimed novels, a number of short stories and essays, children's stories, and a memoir, Ancestors (1972). His award-winning fiction, which is increasingly seen as some of the most important of the 20th Century, has recurring themes of childhood, family, loss and lives changed quietly and irreparably. Much of his work is autobiographical, particularly concerning the loss of his mother when he was 10 years old growing up in the rural Midwest of America and the house where he lived at the time, which he referred to as the "Wunderkammer" or "Chamber of Wonders". He wrote of his loss "It happened too suddenly, with no warning, and we none of us could believe it or bear it... the beautiful, imaginative, protected world of my childhood swept away." Since his death in 2000 several works of biography have appeared, including A William Maxwell Portrait: Memories and Appreciations (W. W. Norton & Co., 2004), My Mentor: A Young Man's Friendship with William Maxwell by Alec Wilkinson (Houghton-Mifflin, 2002), and William Maxwell: A Literary Life by Barbara Burkhardt (University of Illinois Press, 2005). In 2008 the Library of America published the first of two collections of William Maxwell, Early Novels and Stories, Christopher Carduff editor. His collected edition of William Maxwell's fiction, published to mark the writer's centenary, was completed by a second volume, Later Novels and Stories in the fall of 2008.'
William Keepers Maxwell Jr. was an American novelist, and fiction editor at the New Yorker. He studied at the University of Illinois and Harvard University. Maxwell wrote six highly acclaimed novels, a number of short stories and essays, children's stories, and a memoir, Ancestors (1972). His award-winning fiction, which is increasingly seen as some of the most important of the 20th Century, has recurring themes of childhood, family, loss and lives changed quietly and irreparably. Much of his work is autobiographical, particularly concerning the loss of his mother when he was 10 years old growing up in the rural Midwest of America and the house where he lived at the time, which he referred to as the "Wunderkammer" or "Chamber of Wonders". He wrote of his loss "It happened too suddenly, with no warning, and we none of us could believe it or bear it... the beautiful, imaginative, protected world of my childhood swept away." Since his death in 2000 several works of biography have appeared, including A William Maxwell Portrait: Memories and Appreciations (W. W. Norton & Co., 2004), My Mentor: A Young Man's Friendship with William Maxwell by Alec Wilkinson (Houghton-Mifflin, 2002), and William Maxwell: A Literary Life by Barbara Burkhardt (University of Illinois Press, 2005). In 2008 the Library of America published the first of two collections of William Maxwell, Early Novels and Stories, Christopher Carduff editor. His collected edition of William Maxwell's fiction, published to mark the writer's centenary, was completed by a second volume, Later Novels and Stories in the fall of 2008.'
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 23, 2023
4.5
I didn’t actually read this particular volume. But, in this book's order, I reread all its stories (from my Maxwell Library of America volumes) for a buddy read with Howard.
If you read short stories the way I do—one per sitting, in the order the book presents to you—in the best of collections, you may sense an emerging pattern, one that guides you into a deeper understanding of meaning, as well as the author’s process. Of course, a chronological presentation shows you an author’s development, but an ordering such as in this collection shows you something entirely different. Reading some (all?) of these stories for a third time revealed different aspects of Maxwell’s recurring themes and characters, and perhaps that’s at least partly due to the book's order. Several stories I previously thought of as “light,” I appreciated much more this time around.
The stories that bookend the collection, the title story and “The Thistles in Sweden,” stand out as very different from the ones they bracket. Not only are they longer, they seem Woolfian (she was one of Maxwell’s avowed loves). Having recently read her The Years, I especially thought this of Maxwell's title story. The first and last story are “capacious” (a word he uses to great effect in the latter) and, along with “A Final Report,” reveal techniques he perfected in his last work, So Long, See You Tomorrow, a book I know I've read three times.
I didn’t actually read this particular volume. But, in this book's order, I reread all its stories (from my Maxwell Library of America volumes) for a buddy read with Howard.
If you read short stories the way I do—one per sitting, in the order the book presents to you—in the best of collections, you may sense an emerging pattern, one that guides you into a deeper understanding of meaning, as well as the author’s process. Of course, a chronological presentation shows you an author’s development, but an ordering such as in this collection shows you something entirely different. Reading some (all?) of these stories for a third time revealed different aspects of Maxwell’s recurring themes and characters, and perhaps that’s at least partly due to the book's order. Several stories I previously thought of as “light,” I appreciated much more this time around.
The stories that bookend the collection, the title story and “The Thistles in Sweden,” stand out as very different from the ones they bracket. Not only are they longer, they seem Woolfian (she was one of Maxwell’s avowed loves). Having recently read her The Years, I especially thought this of Maxwell's title story. The first and last story are “capacious” (a word he uses to great effect in the latter) and, along with “A Final Report,” reveal techniques he perfected in his last work, So Long, See You Tomorrow, a book I know I've read three times.
July 30, 2021
William Maxwell writes the most marvelous short stories. They are like little novels, everything there, nothing omitted, no feeling of incompleteness or hanging threads. You feel a sweet attachment to his characters and his settings, equally, and you know you are in the presence of a master artist, one who knows every color and how it should be used for maximum effect.
I completely appreciated every one of the stories in this collection, but The Thistles in Sweden, about a couple living in a brownstone in New York City, the neighbors, their lives, their cat, and their desire for a child was so wonderfully satisfying that I could not believe it was only a short story of some 30 pages.
There is also, The Gardens of Mont-Saint-Michel, a superb story about memory and change, in which an American family visit France. The father, who is excited to revisit the gardens of Mont-Saint-Michel, a town that he knew after the war and remembers as an ideal, finds time has changed everything and his lovely memory is destroyed. Maxwell is very good with pinpointing the feelings of nostalgia and the plight of the tourist.
I loved this quote about Reynold's eleven year old daughter, to which I suppose I could relate all too well. She closes Dante With a note of sadness in her voice, because no matter how vivid and all-consuming the book was, or how long, sooner or later she finished it, and was stranded once more in ordinaryness until she had started another.
What Every Boy Should Know is a coming-of-age story of a pubescent boy. This is Maxwell’s forte, if he has one, because he knows what a boy is like at puberty better than almost anyone I know. This story made me revisit So Long See You Tomorrow, because it shared that flavor and mystique.
The Known world is not, of course, known. It probably never will be, because of those areas the mapmakers have very sensibly agreed to ignore, where the terrain is different for every traveler who crosses them. Or fails to cross them.
Maxwell was an editor for The New Yorker magazine from 1936 to 1975. He edited the stories of some of the best, including John Cheever, John O'Hara, J. D. Salinger, Shirley Hazzard, Vladimir Nabokov, and Eudora Welty. His own writing belongs in the category with these giants of literature. I'm guessing they all learned from him.
He and Welty were fast friends and there is a book of their letters, What There Is to Say We Have Said: The Correspondence of Eudora Welty and William Maxwell that I am now very anxious to read.
I completely appreciated every one of the stories in this collection, but The Thistles in Sweden, about a couple living in a brownstone in New York City, the neighbors, their lives, their cat, and their desire for a child was so wonderfully satisfying that I could not believe it was only a short story of some 30 pages.
There is also, The Gardens of Mont-Saint-Michel, a superb story about memory and change, in which an American family visit France. The father, who is excited to revisit the gardens of Mont-Saint-Michel, a town that he knew after the war and remembers as an ideal, finds time has changed everything and his lovely memory is destroyed. Maxwell is very good with pinpointing the feelings of nostalgia and the plight of the tourist.
I loved this quote about Reynold's eleven year old daughter, to which I suppose I could relate all too well. She closes Dante With a note of sadness in her voice, because no matter how vivid and all-consuming the book was, or how long, sooner or later she finished it, and was stranded once more in ordinaryness until she had started another.
What Every Boy Should Know is a coming-of-age story of a pubescent boy. This is Maxwell’s forte, if he has one, because he knows what a boy is like at puberty better than almost anyone I know. This story made me revisit So Long See You Tomorrow, because it shared that flavor and mystique.
The Known world is not, of course, known. It probably never will be, because of those areas the mapmakers have very sensibly agreed to ignore, where the terrain is different for every traveler who crosses them. Or fails to cross them.
Maxwell was an editor for The New Yorker magazine from 1936 to 1975. He edited the stories of some of the best, including John Cheever, John O'Hara, J. D. Salinger, Shirley Hazzard, Vladimir Nabokov, and Eudora Welty. His own writing belongs in the category with these giants of literature. I'm guessing they all learned from him.
He and Welty were fast friends and there is a book of their letters, What There Is to Say We Have Said: The Correspondence of Eudora Welty and William Maxwell that I am now very anxious to read.
October 28, 2021
Such a satisfying group of twelve short stories. Several set in Draperville, Maxwell's fictionalized version of the town he grew up in, Lincoln, Illinois. Several are set in New York City and environs where he lived his adult life and two are set in France featuring vacationers who are looking for the perfect experience (and we know how that's likely to go!). As GR friend, Sara, said of these stories:
William Maxwell writes the most marvelous short stories. They are like little novels, everything there, nothing omitted, no feeling of incompleteness or hanging threads.
This was one of those books I hugged after finishing and wanted to go back and start over. I did glance at them all to lock them in my memory before declaring "I'm finished". Sigh!
Why I'm reading this: I have loved the only two novels of Maxwell's that I've read, They Came Like Swallows and So Long, See You Tomorrow. I was nudged into reading more by this fabulous, loving article on Maxwell by The NYT movie critic A. O. Scott whose series The Americans is focused on a few giants of American literature.
William Maxwell writes the most marvelous short stories. They are like little novels, everything there, nothing omitted, no feeling of incompleteness or hanging threads.
This was one of those books I hugged after finishing and wanted to go back and start over. I did glance at them all to lock them in my memory before declaring "I'm finished". Sigh!
Why I'm reading this: I have loved the only two novels of Maxwell's that I've read, They Came Like Swallows and So Long, See You Tomorrow. I was nudged into reading more by this fabulous, loving article on Maxwell by The NYT movie critic A. O. Scott whose series The Americans is focused on a few giants of American literature.
September 6, 2020
I read this with a buddy on Litsy at a pace of one story a week. There are twelve. They are overall gentle on the surface, maybe too gentle, but then with layers and layers within. Once we started thinking about them and discussing them we found there was a lot more going on than we originally realized.
Maxwell was a fiction editor at The New Yorker from 1936 to 1975. These stories were originally published from 1941 to 1977, quite an interesting expanse of time. There is nothing here on the Civil Right era or the Vietnam War, and he touches on the World War II only obliquely (in a terrific story). They are mostly set in and around NY City, but also include two memorable ones on American tourists in France and several based on his fictionalized version if his birthplace, Lincoln, IL. Maxwell is most known for these stories based on his childhood in Lincoln, IL, and often touching on his life after the death of his own mother to the 1918 flu when he was ten. He left me with the impression of a nice guy looking back.
My tepid recommendation: I didn't love this even as there is nothing particularly bad about it. I've been looking at this book for 14 years, as it was part of a large collection of books my neighbor left me when was downsizing. He was no slouch reader. I liked this book, and his layers and human relationships, and I appreciated how he seemed to get better the closer he approached his real life, and the less dramatic the story lines became. Some of these stories got me excited. (And I really enjoyed the online discussion through Litsy.) It's hard to put my finger on it, but generally the stories somehow just didn't really grab me.
-----------------------------------------------
46. Over by the River : And Other Stories by William Maxwell
published: 1977 (stories from 1941-1977)
format: 242-page first edition Knoff hardcover
acquired: from my neighbor in 2006
read: Jun 13 – Sep 4
time reading: 7 hr 43 min, 1.9 min/page
rating: 3
locations: New York City and vicinity, Lincoln, IL, France
about the author 1908-2000, born and raised in Illinois, fiction editor of The New Yorker magazine 1936–1975
Maxwell was a fiction editor at The New Yorker from 1936 to 1975. These stories were originally published from 1941 to 1977, quite an interesting expanse of time. There is nothing here on the Civil Right era or the Vietnam War, and he touches on the World War II only obliquely (in a terrific story). They are mostly set in and around NY City, but also include two memorable ones on American tourists in France and several based on his fictionalized version if his birthplace, Lincoln, IL. Maxwell is most known for these stories based on his childhood in Lincoln, IL, and often touching on his life after the death of his own mother to the 1918 flu when he was ten. He left me with the impression of a nice guy looking back.
My tepid recommendation: I didn't love this even as there is nothing particularly bad about it. I've been looking at this book for 14 years, as it was part of a large collection of books my neighbor left me when was downsizing. He was no slouch reader. I liked this book, and his layers and human relationships, and I appreciated how he seemed to get better the closer he approached his real life, and the less dramatic the story lines became. Some of these stories got me excited. (And I really enjoyed the online discussion through Litsy.) It's hard to put my finger on it, but generally the stories somehow just didn't really grab me.
-----------------------------------------------
46. Over by the River : And Other Stories by William Maxwell
published: 1977 (stories from 1941-1977)
format: 242-page first edition Knoff hardcover
acquired: from my neighbor in 2006
read: Jun 13 – Sep 4
time reading: 7 hr 43 min, 1.9 min/page
rating: 3
locations: New York City and vicinity, Lincoln, IL, France
about the author 1908-2000, born and raised in Illinois, fiction editor of The New Yorker magazine 1936–1975
September 1, 2022
I love William Maxwell's writing so much! His style is soothing and calming, and then, unexpectedly, he'll jab you with a little humor -- I love it!
This book of short stories shows the full gamut of Maxwell's creative and writing talents. His characters are real, but sometimes quirky; and his descriptions are wonderful! When he describes a room as in "The Thistles in Sweden," you feel like you're standing there beside him -- you are there!
Maxwell is just a "feel good" author for me, and I can't wait to read more :)
This book of short stories shows the full gamut of Maxwell's creative and writing talents. His characters are real, but sometimes quirky; and his descriptions are wonderful! When he describes a room as in "The Thistles in Sweden," you feel like you're standing there beside him -- you are there!
Maxwell is just a "feel good" author for me, and I can't wait to read more :)
June 30, 2023
Over By the River (1977) was William Maxwell’s first short story collection. I recently read these stories with my friend Teresa. We knew that it would be a reread for her because, with the exception of two volumes of letters, she has read everything that he has written. As it turned out, it was also a reread for me since all twelve stories in the collection were later included in All the Days and Nights (1995) that we had read earlier.
That didn’t matter to either of us because rereading them is like visiting an old friend, one who tells good stories, stories that you might have heard him tell before, but never tired of hearing him tell again.
******
By all accounts, Maxwell was a gentle man who not only understood people, he liked them.
Teresa wrote in her review of All the Days and Nights that "Maxwell is kind to his characters. I think he could write sympathetically about anyone, taking the most difficult person and finding his/her tender side. Sometimes wholly unexpectedly, he grants each of his characters a moment of grace, even if it’s not till the story’s end. He’s very good at endings: I marvel at their generosity and open-heartedness."
It was Teresa who introduced me to Maxwell when I read one of her reviews. I asked her where I should begin if I wanted to read one of his books and she recommended his novel, So Long, See You Tomorrow. I was blown away by the book and it made me want to read more of his work.
Along the way I discovered that many of my other friends were also Maxwell fans and had written glowing reviews of his books. I am astounded that this was true of a writer that I was hearing about for the first time. To date, I have read all three of his short story collections and two of his novels. I recently ordered his memoir, Ancestors, and a third novel, but I don’t plan to stop there.
That didn’t matter to either of us because rereading them is like visiting an old friend, one who tells good stories, stories that you might have heard him tell before, but never tired of hearing him tell again.
******
By all accounts, Maxwell was a gentle man who not only understood people, he liked them.
Teresa wrote in her review of All the Days and Nights that "Maxwell is kind to his characters. I think he could write sympathetically about anyone, taking the most difficult person and finding his/her tender side. Sometimes wholly unexpectedly, he grants each of his characters a moment of grace, even if it’s not till the story’s end. He’s very good at endings: I marvel at their generosity and open-heartedness."
It was Teresa who introduced me to Maxwell when I read one of her reviews. I asked her where I should begin if I wanted to read one of his books and she recommended his novel, So Long, See You Tomorrow. I was blown away by the book and it made me want to read more of his work.
Along the way I discovered that many of my other friends were also Maxwell fans and had written glowing reviews of his books. I am astounded that this was true of a writer that I was hearing about for the first time. To date, I have read all three of his short story collections and two of his novels. I recently ordered his memoir, Ancestors, and a third novel, but I don’t plan to stop there.
June 2, 2019
Maxwell comfortably traverses several decades in these stories, some linked, concentrating on 3 locales: a lively Manhattan, a not-so-lively Midwest town and Americans in Europe. There's precision in the writing and real insight into the characters. Well done.
August 9, 2022
I found the paperback of this great book of Maxwell stories at a local consignment store. I had read some of them years ago, but it was so enjoyable to read them again. William Maxwell was a master storyteller and it was like visiting an old, beloved friend.
Want to read
April 24, 2025Read so far:
*Over by the river --
The Trojan women --
*The pilgrimage --
*The patterns of love --
What every boy should know --
*The French scarecrow --
Young Francis Whitehead --
A final report --
Haller's second home --
*The gardens of Mont-Saint-Michel --
The value of money --
*The thistles in Sweden--
***
Further tales about men and women
Lily-white boys--
Love--
*Over by the river --
The Trojan women --
*The pilgrimage --
*The patterns of love --
What every boy should know --
*The French scarecrow --
Young Francis Whitehead --
A final report --
Haller's second home --
*The gardens of Mont-Saint-Michel --
The value of money --
*The thistles in Sweden--
***
Further tales about men and women
Lily-white boys--
Love--
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews