Angel Maker: The Short Stories of Sara Maitland

by Sara Maitland

Women's lives are at the center of this stunning collection of short stories by the writer The New Yorker says "provides unexpected delights....Questions and answers alike shine with intelligence and an almost ninteenth-century concern for ideals."

Though Sara Maitland's interests are as varied as the people who inhabit her stories, there is a common theme to this work that extols risk taking over safety. Acrobats, women warriors, a girl who wants to become a garden, a long-distance runner, housewives and mothers, and a reformed sixteenth-century conquistador are among the characters revealed in this dazzling collection.

By turns elegant and simple, erotic and elegiac, the stories draw on classical mythology, folktales, inexplicable accidents of history, and disquieting experiences of the supernatural. And, as Ann Beattie has writen of Sara Maitland's wise and magical fiction, "it speaks to today's reader in a voice that is irresistible."

Familiar names from literature--Gretel, Eurydice of the green fields, the shepherd Prince Endymion, Lady Artemis-commingle with contemporary characters called David, Meg, and Liz, who desperately seek love and fulfillment and frequently have babies when they can't get what they want. Close by is the echo of Mary Magdalene, teaching us about endurance and perserverance in a voice rich with the experiences of the sex object and the "true-love dichotomy." The author suggests: "She must have thought the crucifixion a bit mad too."

Sara Maitland never holds back; instead, she invites us again and again to a place of risks, and we enter, "not because we must, but because we will." And when you are about to lose heart, you meet Caroline, who has learned what it is to be strong, how it feels to be free of fear, how it feels to be totally herself: "Then she looked at Richard and he was smiling, not pityingly, not even kindly, but with open admiration."

Genres: Short Stories, Fantasy, Fiction, Magic, Fairy Tales

351 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Sara Maitland is a British writer and academic. An accomplished novelist, she is also known for her short stories. Her work has a magic realist tendency. Maitland is regarded as one of those at the vanguard of the 1970s feminist movement, and is often described as a feminist writer. She is a Roman Catholic, and religion is another theme in much of her work.

Reviews

[Katherine Reiter]

I won't rate because tee bee aych i only got halfway through. I did enjoy it at first, but it quickly felt like I was reading the same story over and over again. Woman sad. got some terfy vibes but also that's just me

[Tim Pieraccini · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastically well-written, if sometimes intimidatingly intense.

[west20trees · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maitland is a master of reworking classic narratives, whether it's the fairytale of Hansel and Gretel, as in the title story of the collection, or Greek mythology. Brilliant philosophical stories with rich symbolism.

[Leti Hawthorn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love her work, what more can i say?!