What do you think?
Rate this book
The Slightest Distance
Excellent Book
192 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1974
14 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 17, 2012
The New Yorker was well-known for a while for publishing great stories in which nothing much happens. The focus in such stories is on "inner experience," and their drama is revealed through subtle shifts in dialog or a glance or a character's percetpion. John Updike was a master of the style, and wrote such stories how he said all writers should write prose--ecstatically.
I became an avid reader of The New Yorker late in high school, around the time Henry Brommel's stories started showing up in the magazine. For some reason, I found myself fascinated with them. There's probably less going on in a typical Brommel story than even a typical Updike story but these stories held my attention. Maybe it's becaause most of the stories are from the perspective of--or at least largely about--an adolscent college-aged boy I identified with. In The Slightest Distance, which collects a lot of the stories Brommel published in The New Yorker in the early 1970s, Scobie observes (more than interacts with)members of his family, the Richardsons, as they scuttle between the United States and Europe (Dad is supposedly a U.S. diplomat, though there are suggestions of something more clandestine). In between Scobie is seen with one girl or another, never quite settling down. It may not sound like much, but Bromell is so unassuming and word-perfect in his prose that, while he may not write as ecstatically as Updike, he writes with a clarity and beauty that only the greatest writers achieve.
Quiet stories, gentle stories. Don't expect a page-turner here. Expect a leisurely, sometimes romantic, and ultimately slightly unsettling experience. It doesn't take long to start seeing the implications of book's title in the themes of the stories.
I became an avid reader of The New Yorker late in high school, around the time Henry Brommel's stories started showing up in the magazine. For some reason, I found myself fascinated with them. There's probably less going on in a typical Brommel story than even a typical Updike story but these stories held my attention. Maybe it's becaause most of the stories are from the perspective of--or at least largely about--an adolscent college-aged boy I identified with. In The Slightest Distance, which collects a lot of the stories Brommel published in The New Yorker in the early 1970s, Scobie observes (more than interacts with)members of his family, the Richardsons, as they scuttle between the United States and Europe (Dad is supposedly a U.S. diplomat, though there are suggestions of something more clandestine). In between Scobie is seen with one girl or another, never quite settling down. It may not sound like much, but Bromell is so unassuming and word-perfect in his prose that, while he may not write as ecstatically as Updike, he writes with a clarity and beauty that only the greatest writers achieve.
Quiet stories, gentle stories. Don't expect a page-turner here. Expect a leisurely, sometimes romantic, and ultimately slightly unsettling experience. It doesn't take long to start seeing the implications of book's title in the themes of the stories.
Displaying 1 of 1 review