What do you think?
Rate this book
Come Back to Sorrento
This is a previously-published edition of ISBN 9781883642266.
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED as "The Tenth Moon," "Come Back to Sorrento" is the second of Powell's "Ohio novels" to be re-issued in paperback. Here Powell turns her attention to those certain rare souls who have the secret of finding their lives glamorous and themselves magnificent under the most humble conditions. Connie Benjamin, the village shoemaker's wife, always wanted an operatic career. Blaine Decker, the new high school music teacher, once spent time abroad studying piano. The two are drawn together into a powerful friendship of dependence, each sustaining the other and translating the surface monotony of their lives into drama richer than reality.
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED as "The Tenth Moon," "Come Back to Sorrento" is the second of Powell's "Ohio novels" to be re-issued in paperback. Here Powell turns her attention to those certain rare souls who have the secret of finding their lives glamorous and themselves magnificent under the most humble conditions. Connie Benjamin, the village shoemaker's wife, always wanted an operatic career. Blaine Decker, the new high school music teacher, once spent time abroad studying piano. The two are drawn together into a powerful friendship of dependence, each sustaining the other and translating the surface monotony of their lives into drama richer than reality.
185 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1932
2 people are currently reading
273 people want to read
About the author
Dawn Powell
43 books338 followersDawn Powell was an American writer of satirical novels and stories that manage to be barbed and sensitive at the same time.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
December 24, 2025
Dawn Powell At Her Best
Dawn Powell's "Come Back to Sorrento", was published in 1932 under the title "The Tenth Moon" to little notice from critics or from the public. But this poignant, mostly understated novel set in a drab midwestern town called Dell River is a gem.
The two main characters in the book are Connie Benjamin and Blaine Decker. When we meet Connie as a housewife in her mid-thirties, she is leading a life she finds sterile and barren with her husband Gus, a cobbler, and her two adolescent daughters. As a young woman, Connie had visions of a career as an opera singer, even though this ambition seemed to be based on little more than a commendation of her voice by a famous teacher. Connie also has a past in which she ran off with a young man named Tony who did acrobatics with a circus. Tony abandoned her, and Connie lives with dreams of a singing career that perhaps could have been and with faded memories of Tony.
Blaine Decker comes to Dell River as the high school music teacher. He rents a small apartment above Gus Decker's shoe repair shop. Decker is a pianist by training (with small hands) who likewise has never had the artistic success of which he dreams. He spent his early years in Europe during which time he was a friend of a writer, Starr Donnell, who had written, as far as Decker knows, one novel. Powell hints throughout the novel at Decker's repressed homosexuality.
The novel explores the relationship that develops between Connie and Blaine. With their shared love of music and their broken, and probably illusory dreams, they feel stifled by the small town of Dell River. They share confidences with each other and at the same time quarrel severely over their respective failures to pursue their dreams. The relationship is at bottom frustrating and unconsummated. It never becomes sexual.
There are wonderful pictures in this book of music and its capacity to bring meaning to life. The seriousness with which Powell discusses the pursuit of classical music in this work contrasts markedly with her picture of frivolous people and activities in her subsequent satirical New York novels. Powell also shows how music can be a means by which people evade their own selves and their own reality. There are also good depictions in the book of life in a small town, particularly those people who teach in High Schools, and of many secondary characters.
As do Powell's latter works, this book contrasts life in a small town with life in the cosmopolitan city, here represented by Paris more than by New York. But there is a certain inward focus to this book which is not shared by her latter satirical pictures of New York. The characters here are limited by Dell River and its environs, but their problems and discontents lie within themselves, in their lack of self-knowledge, and in their failed dreams. The book lacks the sharp cynicism of the latter novels but features instead reflectiveness and sadness.
Powell's writing style in this novel is rather flatter than in her subsequent works but it fits the atmosphere of Dell River that she conveys. There are several moments in the novel or lyricism and intensity.
"Come Back to Sorrento" probably is not a novel that will ever enjoy wide readership. But it is rare and a treasure. This paperback edition appears to be out of print. But the novel is included in the first of two Library of America volumes of the novels of Dawn Powell.
Robin Friedman
Dawn Powell's "Come Back to Sorrento", was published in 1932 under the title "The Tenth Moon" to little notice from critics or from the public. But this poignant, mostly understated novel set in a drab midwestern town called Dell River is a gem.
The two main characters in the book are Connie Benjamin and Blaine Decker. When we meet Connie as a housewife in her mid-thirties, she is leading a life she finds sterile and barren with her husband Gus, a cobbler, and her two adolescent daughters. As a young woman, Connie had visions of a career as an opera singer, even though this ambition seemed to be based on little more than a commendation of her voice by a famous teacher. Connie also has a past in which she ran off with a young man named Tony who did acrobatics with a circus. Tony abandoned her, and Connie lives with dreams of a singing career that perhaps could have been and with faded memories of Tony.
Blaine Decker comes to Dell River as the high school music teacher. He rents a small apartment above Gus Decker's shoe repair shop. Decker is a pianist by training (with small hands) who likewise has never had the artistic success of which he dreams. He spent his early years in Europe during which time he was a friend of a writer, Starr Donnell, who had written, as far as Decker knows, one novel. Powell hints throughout the novel at Decker's repressed homosexuality.
The novel explores the relationship that develops between Connie and Blaine. With their shared love of music and their broken, and probably illusory dreams, they feel stifled by the small town of Dell River. They share confidences with each other and at the same time quarrel severely over their respective failures to pursue their dreams. The relationship is at bottom frustrating and unconsummated. It never becomes sexual.
There are wonderful pictures in this book of music and its capacity to bring meaning to life. The seriousness with which Powell discusses the pursuit of classical music in this work contrasts markedly with her picture of frivolous people and activities in her subsequent satirical New York novels. Powell also shows how music can be a means by which people evade their own selves and their own reality. There are also good depictions in the book of life in a small town, particularly those people who teach in High Schools, and of many secondary characters.
As do Powell's latter works, this book contrasts life in a small town with life in the cosmopolitan city, here represented by Paris more than by New York. But there is a certain inward focus to this book which is not shared by her latter satirical pictures of New York. The characters here are limited by Dell River and its environs, but their problems and discontents lie within themselves, in their lack of self-knowledge, and in their failed dreams. The book lacks the sharp cynicism of the latter novels but features instead reflectiveness and sadness.
Powell's writing style in this novel is rather flatter than in her subsequent works but it fits the atmosphere of Dell River that she conveys. There are several moments in the novel or lyricism and intensity.
"Come Back to Sorrento" probably is not a novel that will ever enjoy wide readership. But it is rare and a treasure. This paperback edition appears to be out of print. But the novel is included in the first of two Library of America volumes of the novels of Dawn Powell.
Robin Friedman
September 21, 2024
This early-career novel by Powell - one of the author's 'Ohio novels', stark contrasts to her bustling works set in New York City - is one that the author didn't originally think much of. Some time later, however - while writing another 'country book', 'My Home Is Far Away' - she had cause to review the work (and the remaining notes for it, for research) and - lo and behold! - her opinion changed: "... the best writing I ever did... a quivering book filled with pain and beauty."
Artists aren't always the best judges of their own work. 'Come Back...' may not be Powell's best writing - for that, one might have to dip into some of those New York books, like the chef's kiss that is 'A Time to Be Born'. But it is certainly very good writing - filled, as the author says, with 'pain and beauty': pain, ultimately, in the story that is being told; beauty in the actual rhythms of the language and the compassion that Powell has for her characters, esp. leading players Connie and Blaine.
Years prior, C&B started out in lives of semi-promise; Connie as a classical singer and Blaine as a pianist. But, due to troublesome circumstances, an artist's life was not to be for either of them. Instead, after the facts of their years of potential, fate steps in to navigate the two souls into the same small town. For better or worse, they gravitate to an awkwardly intimate understanding.
~ though not a sexual one; the town being a difficult one for romantic inclination... and Blaine being gay; something Powell only ever 'states' obliquely as a given (still, refreshing for 1932!). She does this through Blaine's memory of a man long gone:
Powell takes pains in fostering our empathy towards C&B. With their emotional warts and all, she is clearly on their side. We witness this in the way Blaine talks his way out of embarrassment. Or when Connie either bolsters the spirits of her younger daughter:
As a reader, I might've wished that certain things would have happened differently for both C&B. But the power in this novel rests in its ability to 'embrace' the inevitable. This may not be among my favorites in Powell's work. Nevertheless, I found its view of humanity piercing and accurate, and its perspective a generous one.
Artists aren't always the best judges of their own work. 'Come Back...' may not be Powell's best writing - for that, one might have to dip into some of those New York books, like the chef's kiss that is 'A Time to Be Born'. But it is certainly very good writing - filled, as the author says, with 'pain and beauty': pain, ultimately, in the story that is being told; beauty in the actual rhythms of the language and the compassion that Powell has for her characters, esp. leading players Connie and Blaine.
Years prior, C&B started out in lives of semi-promise; Connie as a classical singer and Blaine as a pianist. But, due to troublesome circumstances, an artist's life was not to be for either of them. Instead, after the facts of their years of potential, fate steps in to navigate the two souls into the same small town. For better or worse, they gravitate to an awkwardly intimate understanding.
~ though not a sexual one; the town being a difficult one for romantic inclination... and Blaine being gay; something Powell only ever 'states' obliquely as a given (still, refreshing for 1932!). She does this through Blaine's memory of a man long gone:
Thinking of Starr, as he would be thinking of him forever, he knew that his heart again seemed torn out of his body, it was impossible that two people who were one person should be ripped apart, the only way he could heal this anguish of remembering was by thinking hard of the perfection of that brief year, thinking of it proudly as a triumph rather than dwelling on the end of it which meant defeat.Blaine is not alone in suppressed heartache. Connie also has someone in her past that she has not moved on from - even though she is now married and the mother of two teenage girls.
Powell takes pains in fostering our empathy towards C&B. With their emotional warts and all, she is clearly on their side. We witness this in the way Blaine talks his way out of embarrassment. Or when Connie either bolsters the spirits of her younger daughter:
"Wait, Mimi," she said. "I'll go with you."or surprises herself by giving literal voice to something she believes had long ago left her:
"Lady," said Busch in a choked voice. "I swear to God that's the most beautiful music a man ever heard. I'm telling you the truth and I thank you."If Powell doesn't sit in judgment of C&B, neither does she sentimentalize them. She views them realistically as deluded humans but, even as such, she imbues them with a respect that is not at all grudging. (This is partially accomplished through the peripheral, 'triangle' character of Louisa, a potent onlooker.)
As a reader, I might've wished that certain things would have happened differently for both C&B. But the power in this novel rests in its ability to 'embrace' the inevitable. This may not be among my favorites in Powell's work. Nevertheless, I found its view of humanity piercing and accurate, and its perspective a generous one.
August 3, 2013
Although this novel is also set in a small town (like Dance Night), it feels more deranged and claustrophobic. It focuses on the friendship between a middle-aged woman who as a young girl showed some promise as a singer but ran away with a carnival hand (and was soon abandoned) and a new music teacher who also failed to "make it" in the big city. The woman is now married to an emotionally bankrupt shoemaker, and the music teacher is a despicable snob with a domineering mother. With a spinster school teacher, they form a "salon" that feels by turns hopeful and pathetic. What's great about this book is the way Powell captures the hallucinogenic quality of nostalgia for things we never had, and the way we sometimes pretend our failures were "meant" to happen, a mental trick or type of denial that prevents us from seeing the impoverished truth of the present. What's more laughable but also (sociologically/historically) interesting is Powell's treatment of the piano teacher's [MINOR SPOILER] non-heterosexuality, but is not something Powell reveals until the very end, by never referring to his past love for another man except by androgynous name ("Starr"), which comes off as a bit forced and LOL. On the whole, though, the book is haunting and tragic.
January 18, 2023
A very trenchant look at small-town delusions, but at times almost painful to read. Extremely well written and beautifully observed; it's just full of characters you don't necessarily want to be around. Think of Blanche DuBois in small-town Ohio...
January 6, 2009
Thanks to Tim Page, who appears to bear a lot of responsibility for the reprinting of many of Powell's books.
Come Back to Sorrento is about two middle-aged people who had brushes with fame as youths and are now living ordinary lives in a small Ohio town. They bond over their shared conviction of superiority to those around them. The strength in this book is in the characters -- whole, interesting, and, as always, sympathetic despite major flaws -- and their relationships. Powell has yet to write a character that didn't feel incredibly real to me. Oh, and the ending is amazing.
Come Back to Sorrento is about two middle-aged people who had brushes with fame as youths and are now living ordinary lives in a small Ohio town. They bond over their shared conviction of superiority to those around them. The strength in this book is in the characters -- whole, interesting, and, as always, sympathetic despite major flaws -- and their relationships. Powell has yet to write a character that didn't feel incredibly real to me. Oh, and the ending is amazing.
August 7, 2025
“I read it all the way through weeping and moved to my depths. The fact is that it is a beautiful book – the best writing I ever did and technically flawless, with the most delicate flowering of a relationship that grips interest.”
Fulsome in her own self-praise, it is perhaps no wonder that Dawn Powell should choose to write about a couple of deluded, small-town aesthetes and find her creations both moving and interesting.
Me, not so much. “Irritating” and “tedious” would be closer to the truth, possibly because Dawn Powell’s technically flawless writing seems to lack much wit or humour – and they are desperately needed in order to endure her characters for more than a few pages.
The odd couple who find themselves washed up on the shores of Dell River, Ohio, are both fixated on a what-might-have-been moment in the past. She might have been a great singer, he might have been a concert pianist...but they aren’t. Both live on their fantasies and find comfort in their shared folie à deux.
As an exploration of a quasi-psychotic relationship, this might have been interesting...but it’s all fairly superficial and scenically repetitive.
I confess that after a few score pages I was hoping for some disturbance, possibly terminal. But I had to wait till the end, which was far too late to redeem a dull novel that on a good day might have made a middling short story.
Fulsome in her own self-praise, it is perhaps no wonder that Dawn Powell should choose to write about a couple of deluded, small-town aesthetes and find her creations both moving and interesting.
Me, not so much. “Irritating” and “tedious” would be closer to the truth, possibly because Dawn Powell’s technically flawless writing seems to lack much wit or humour – and they are desperately needed in order to endure her characters for more than a few pages.
The odd couple who find themselves washed up on the shores of Dell River, Ohio, are both fixated on a what-might-have-been moment in the past. She might have been a great singer, he might have been a concert pianist...but they aren’t. Both live on their fantasies and find comfort in their shared folie à deux.
As an exploration of a quasi-psychotic relationship, this might have been interesting...but it’s all fairly superficial and scenically repetitive.
I confess that after a few score pages I was hoping for some disturbance, possibly terminal. But I had to wait till the end, which was far too late to redeem a dull novel that on a good day might have made a middling short story.
November 17, 2017
What at first seemed like a bit of a jagged slog shifted into something of a slow-building revelation of sheer savagery. Come Back to Sorrento takes a measured approach, gently revealing the stasis of its two protagonists: both a bit stifled, a bit too easily disheartened by circumstance, a bit too intoxicated with the invented excuses for their complacency, a bit too insular and protective of their own notions of themselves as talents besieged by the fates rather than sheer no-talents. This topic is a major issue for me as a non-committal musician, and Powell's mix of brutality and empathy makes the beats hit harder than usual.
Somewhere halfway through the book, the gradual shift in tone throughout the book starts to align more toward merciless skewering, and it throws the first half of the book into an altogether different context. Powell is a master at taking very specific characters in niche situations and really giving them an undivided laser beam of satirical attention. It's a lean story, ultimately, and one that has a lot of tragic momentum to it. At once it sympathizes with the extreme difficulties that undergo the starving artist's striving for success, it understands that there is a cutthroat mentality to it that compassionate people struggle with, and yet makes a point for how a retreat into a gentle fantasy of "prodigious talent" can breed more assertive, manipulative, reactionary behavior in those around you. The delineation between the mutually-built fantastical realm of musical wonder and the world of actual needs gets starker and more consequential. Powell outlines both the aggravating and mitigating circumstances of this predicament to stark, funny, brutally implicating, and ultimately provocative effect.
This is one that will sit with me for a while. It's a wake-up call for musicians like me who have lived in perpetual, non-committal dread. Powell does it again.
Somewhere halfway through the book, the gradual shift in tone throughout the book starts to align more toward merciless skewering, and it throws the first half of the book into an altogether different context. Powell is a master at taking very specific characters in niche situations and really giving them an undivided laser beam of satirical attention. It's a lean story, ultimately, and one that has a lot of tragic momentum to it. At once it sympathizes with the extreme difficulties that undergo the starving artist's striving for success, it understands that there is a cutthroat mentality to it that compassionate people struggle with, and yet makes a point for how a retreat into a gentle fantasy of "prodigious talent" can breed more assertive, manipulative, reactionary behavior in those around you. The delineation between the mutually-built fantastical realm of musical wonder and the world of actual needs gets starker and more consequential. Powell outlines both the aggravating and mitigating circumstances of this predicament to stark, funny, brutally implicating, and ultimately provocative effect.
This is one that will sit with me for a while. It's a wake-up call for musicians like me who have lived in perpetual, non-committal dread. Powell does it again.
April 13, 2020
I am definitely turning into a Dawn Powell fan. Unlike "The Golden Spur" and "Angels on Toast", this novel takes place in a sleepy Ohio town, Dell River, and its 2 main characters are people who would rather dream than live their lives. Connie Benjamin once dreamed of a career as an opera singer, but her grand-father vetoed it. Connie then eloped with a tight-rope walker who abandoned her as soon as she fell pregnant. She had the good fortune of being rescued by a no-nonsense cobbler, Gus. Connie lost Tony's baby but went on having 2 daughters with Gus. For nearly 2 decades, she has been an indifferent wife and mother and spent the bulk of her time fantasizing about her lost career, while doing nothing to keep up with her music. Too shy and disengaged to build a social life in Dell River, Connie is pretty much a hermit until the local school hires Blaine Decker as its music teacher. Decker once spent a thrilling summer in Europe with his male lover, the novelist Starr Donnell, and insists on presenting himself to Dell River as a successful, cosmopolitan artist although he is broke and a failure both as a composer and as a pedagogue. Connie and Decker conspire to bolster each other up by pretending to believe in each other's chosen persona of gifted musician whose success has been tragically thwarted by fate. Because their friendship is built on a lie, it is always on the point of unraveling, but neither can afford to lose the wonderful mirror the other represents. Decker spends most of his salary on his own mother, not because she needs the money but because he desperately needs her to believe he is doing well in life. When Connie falls ill, the uncomplaining Gus does everything he can to make her confortable, even if they have to sell their house and move into the cramped rooms above his cobbler's shop. Their daughter Helen, who always despised their parents for their poverty and lack of social skills and ambitions, elopes with a class mate, gets married and goes in pursuit of a career on the stage. Connie make a half-hearted attempt to bring her back home, but unlike her Helen is a tough and shrewd kid who is determined to seize whatever she wants from life by hook or by crook. After Connie's death, the Lady Bountiful of Dell River, Laurie Neville, kindly invites Decker to accompany her on a European tour. While Decker ought to be madly grateful for this opportunity, in fact he is terrified of being once again confronted to genuinely talented people who see through him and have no patience with his evasions and self-aggrandizement. Small-town Ohio, which he pretended to despise, is the only pond in which he can just about be a big fish. Connie and Decker are pathetic yet Powell is non-judgmental and merely shows how they fritter their lives in pursuit of an idealized image of themselves. Decker is reminiscent of Capek's Foltyn, another self-declared composer who doesn't even bother with anything so trivial as to actually learn music.
January 11, 2024
The kind of novel about depressed small town lives that Barbara Pym did better, I think.
Interesting for Powell fans, but a rather flawed and probably too personal a novel. Sometimes lapses into a Jamesian mode of writing that isn't very compelling, and the focus on an ensemble of different characters (none of which is really fleshed out fully enough to make them much more than caricatures) rather slackens the impact of the whole. Not to mention a totally haphazard coincidence at the end of the novel, a minor incident in itself, but so unconvincing it rather really breaks the illusion. (Unless the entire incident is not supposed to be real but only takes place in the character's head, I'm not entirely sure about that; except that it's the only *realistically* plausible reading.)
Interesting for Powell fans, but a rather flawed and probably too personal a novel. Sometimes lapses into a Jamesian mode of writing that isn't very compelling, and the focus on an ensemble of different characters (none of which is really fleshed out fully enough to make them much more than caricatures) rather slackens the impact of the whole. Not to mention a totally haphazard coincidence at the end of the novel, a minor incident in itself, but so unconvincing it rather really breaks the illusion. (Unless the entire incident is not supposed to be real but only takes place in the character's head, I'm not entirely sure about that; except that it's the only *realistically* plausible reading.)
February 2, 2018
A housewife and a music teacher in a small Midwest town (Ohio?) love to talk about what-might-have-been, instead of facing the reality that she has no control over her wayward daughter and is married to a boring shoe cobbler who picked her out of the gutter and he is a mediocre, poor music teacher, bullied by his mother into giving what little he has for her's and his lazy brother's vacations. Meanwhile, the rich benefactress of the town is crippled at the thought of what the townspeople supposedly think of her. An ode to small-minded, neurotic people, and a talented character study.
July 1, 2023
Just incredible. A devastating novel about loneliness, disillusionment, and friendship. This is the most acidic and tragic Powell I’ve read so far. The characters here are so self absorbed, severely insecure and depressed. Connie and Deckers friendship is the best thing they’ve got going for each other and yet most of the time they don’t realize it. They’d rather live in the past and mourn what could have been than try to make their life worthwhile now.
At times so uncomfortable to read but I couldn’t put it down. Like her other works, Powell has such empathy for her characters.
At times so uncomfortable to read but I couldn’t put it down. Like her other works, Powell has such empathy for her characters.
May 24, 2019
The prose is there, but this one doesn't have the humor, which added so much to Powell's later novels. Also she head-hops a lot, which accentuates the nearly universal disagreeability of her characters. The storyline might have worked better from Mimi's POV, but feels dated, as it is. Of course, Powell is a wonderful writer, and the novel is quickly closing in on its century mark.
November 23, 2020
Building yourself up mentally as special for years based on your dreams of youth, which you might have achieved but never even tried, only to find yourself well past your prime with nothing but mediocrity to show for it. Hit me entirely too close to home. Shook, as they say.
January 24, 2022
Do I prefer Powell's New York novels? You bet. Big time.
But this book has a real mid-west charm and a sort of, can I call it, a Music Man quality?
She's really good at what she does. But I suppose, as a New Yorker, I like it when she's talks about where I live better.
But this book has a real mid-west charm and a sort of, can I call it, a Music Man quality?
She's really good at what she does. But I suppose, as a New Yorker, I like it when she's talks about where I live better.
March 26, 2022
Wonderful, quiet, small town satire while still possessing affection for frustrated characters. Powell was quite successful in her time but sadly now seems entirely forgotten. Sorrento is my first, planning to read more for sure soon.
July 27, 2023
I don’t really know how to describe this – maybe subdued and offbeat? Anyway, enjoyable and with a good ending though Powell takes a bleak enough view of her characters through most of the book that it’s not always a pleasant read.
October 31, 2023
Slow paced, this story would have been improved by a secondary plot. Painful from start to finish because of the characters' choice not to do anything but pretend they could accomplish much if they so chose.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 8, 2021
A depressing story about a woman who gave up on her dreams of being a singer and a music teacher with aspirations who everyone seems to pity and ridicule.
February 24, 2024
Such a sad book. With strong characters that are disillusioned with life. I like Powell’s style.
August 4, 2025
"Here Powell turns her attention to those certain rare souls who have the secret of finding their lives glamorous and themselves magnificent under the most humble conditions."
March 30, 2016
Come back to Sorrento
: 4 estrellas.
Connie Benjamin es una mujer joven, tímida y bastante antisocial. Es la esposa de un zapatero y madre de dos niñas. Sin embargo, para ella el esplendor de su vida fue hace varios años, cuando tuvo la oportunidad de cantar ante una importante figura del ambiente musical y convertirse en una estrella. Por razones que la sobrepasaban en ese entonces, esto no ocurrió así y el destino le deparó otras experiencias. Por su parte, Blaine Decker, un joven maestro de música, llega a la pequeña ciudad, con su estilo afrancesado y haciendo alarde de sus estudios pasados en piano en París. Tanto para Connie como para Blaine el tiempo se detuvo en aquellos días y ese se vuelve su sustento de vida.
La trama de la historia es esa y no hay mucho más. Es raro lo que me pasó; a medida que lo iba leyendo no podía evitar indignarme, porque no podía creer que realmente hubiese gente tan egocéntrica y tan equivocada. Llegué a pensar que era muy exagerado por momentos.
La mayoría de los personajes realizaba un esfuerzo muy grande por encajar, lo importante era fingir. Y eso implicaba creerse más que el otro, criticarlo, y nunca mostrar su debilidad. Emanaban demasiado orgullo y ego para mi gusto.
Esa relación de dependencia se volvía tan absurda e innecesaria: los actos cobraban sentido sólo si Blaine podía verlo o escuchar sobre ello. No podía entenderlo.
Eso sí, está escrito de forma muy bella, lo que hace que la lectura sea amena.
La contraposición que se plantea de fondo es la de creer que hay un destino que marca nuestros pasos y que no podemos hacer nada al respecto; y por el otro lado, la perspectiva de que si querés que algo ocurra, tenés que hacer algo para conseguirlo. En particular, tengo una visión intermedia de estas concepciones: creo que existe el destino, que hay cosas prepautadas que van a ocurrir, pero eso no significa que voy a dejar que la vida pase frente a mis ojos, no significa que voy a dejar de intentarlo; todo lo contrario.
Lo que me maravilló de todo esto es que el impacto de la historia me llegó varias horas después de haber terminado de leerlo. Porque nadie está exento de que nos ocurra lo mismo, todos alguna vez nos ponemos melancólicos y volvemos a revivir esa situación del pasado, que tal vez nunca llegó a ser, eso que nunca llegamos a ser o hacer. Entonces, ¿cuál es la diferencia entre Connie y yo o el resto de las personas? Creo que Connie y Blaine vivían de ese pasado que no fue, en el presente; mentían al resto, creyendo que fue casi real, y terminaban creyendo su propia mentira, a tal punto que esta los envolvió por completo. De repente, ninguno pudo ver más allá de esta tela que tejieron, se enceguecieron en sus propias palabras.
No hay nada de malo con rememorar y revivir viejos recuerdos. Pero pienso que simplemente hay que recordar que tenemos nuestros pies sobre el suelo, hoy y ahora, y que viviendo en el presente es la única forma de lograr las cosas.
Come back to Sorrento es otra de las novelas cortas de Dawn Powell que corresponden a los pequeños pueblos de Ohio. No obstante, a diferencia de Dance Night, donde lo primordial es escapar de allí, aquí los personajes principales buscan todo el tiempo regresar a un momento de su vida que fue crucial para ellos, buscan vivir en aquel tiempo pasado que jamás ocurrió en verdad y se olvidan de tener que lidiar con el presente. De nuevo, pienso que hay un planteo psicológico en esto, pues lo que conseguían viviendo en esa mentira era engañarse a sí mismos, y de cierta manera protegerse de una realidad que negaban haber vivido. A veces, descubrir y aceptar la realidad es demasiado doloroso, y no todos podemos o queremos tolerarlo.
Otra novela brillante, sólo eso.
Connie Benjamin es una mujer joven, tímida y bastante antisocial. Es la esposa de un zapatero y madre de dos niñas. Sin embargo, para ella el esplendor de su vida fue hace varios años, cuando tuvo la oportunidad de cantar ante una importante figura del ambiente musical y convertirse en una estrella. Por razones que la sobrepasaban en ese entonces, esto no ocurrió así y el destino le deparó otras experiencias. Por su parte, Blaine Decker, un joven maestro de música, llega a la pequeña ciudad, con su estilo afrancesado y haciendo alarde de sus estudios pasados en piano en París. Tanto para Connie como para Blaine el tiempo se detuvo en aquellos días y ese se vuelve su sustento de vida.
La trama de la historia es esa y no hay mucho más. Es raro lo que me pasó; a medida que lo iba leyendo no podía evitar indignarme, porque no podía creer que realmente hubiese gente tan egocéntrica y tan equivocada. Llegué a pensar que era muy exagerado por momentos.
La mayoría de los personajes realizaba un esfuerzo muy grande por encajar, lo importante era fingir. Y eso implicaba creerse más que el otro, criticarlo, y nunca mostrar su debilidad. Emanaban demasiado orgullo y ego para mi gusto.
Esa relación de dependencia se volvía tan absurda e innecesaria: los actos cobraban sentido sólo si Blaine podía verlo o escuchar sobre ello. No podía entenderlo.
Eso sí, está escrito de forma muy bella, lo que hace que la lectura sea amena.
La contraposición que se plantea de fondo es la de creer que hay un destino que marca nuestros pasos y que no podemos hacer nada al respecto; y por el otro lado, la perspectiva de que si querés que algo ocurra, tenés que hacer algo para conseguirlo. En particular, tengo una visión intermedia de estas concepciones: creo que existe el destino, que hay cosas prepautadas que van a ocurrir, pero eso no significa que voy a dejar que la vida pase frente a mis ojos, no significa que voy a dejar de intentarlo; todo lo contrario.
Lo que me maravilló de todo esto es que el impacto de la historia me llegó varias horas después de haber terminado de leerlo. Porque nadie está exento de que nos ocurra lo mismo, todos alguna vez nos ponemos melancólicos y volvemos a revivir esa situación del pasado, que tal vez nunca llegó a ser, eso que nunca llegamos a ser o hacer. Entonces, ¿cuál es la diferencia entre Connie y yo o el resto de las personas? Creo que Connie y Blaine vivían de ese pasado que no fue, en el presente; mentían al resto, creyendo que fue casi real, y terminaban creyendo su propia mentira, a tal punto que esta los envolvió por completo. De repente, ninguno pudo ver más allá de esta tela que tejieron, se enceguecieron en sus propias palabras.
No hay nada de malo con rememorar y revivir viejos recuerdos. Pero pienso que simplemente hay que recordar que tenemos nuestros pies sobre el suelo, hoy y ahora, y que viviendo en el presente es la única forma de lograr las cosas.
Come back to Sorrento es otra de las novelas cortas de Dawn Powell que corresponden a los pequeños pueblos de Ohio. No obstante, a diferencia de Dance Night, donde lo primordial es escapar de allí, aquí los personajes principales buscan todo el tiempo regresar a un momento de su vida que fue crucial para ellos, buscan vivir en aquel tiempo pasado que jamás ocurrió en verdad y se olvidan de tener que lidiar con el presente. De nuevo, pienso que hay un planteo psicológico en esto, pues lo que conseguían viviendo en esa mentira era engañarse a sí mismos, y de cierta manera protegerse de una realidad que negaban haber vivido. A veces, descubrir y aceptar la realidad es demasiado doloroso, y no todos podemos o queremos tolerarlo.
Otra novela brillante, sólo eso.
February 3, 2017
This is an early novel by Dawn Powell and it is set in the Midwest. I will say that I prefer some of her later novels which are set in NYC more as the characters and set piece seem more sophisticated. Still Dawn Powell is an excellent novelist forgotten by most people today. The plot of the novel is pretty simple two isolated dreamers one a housewife and the other a high school music teacher find friendship in a small Midwestern town. There they feed each other's delusions that with their rarefied aesthetic sensibilities they were met for a more sophisticated world.
Powell makes clear that Mrs. Benjamin and Mister Decker are prisoners in an imaginary world that they have built in contrast to their flat and tedious daily lives. This is made most conspicuous when Mrs. Benjamin's daughter Helen(a nasty brittle little piece of work ) elopes with a local yokel suitor to escape the clutches of her backwater hometown. Helen unlike the main characters is willing to take action to at least try and pursue a more interesting life.
There are multiple other interesting characters in this novel and Powell creates a masterful death scene for one of her characters that is full of incite. I expect to be reading more Dawn Powell in 2017 as i have bought a Modern library edition of her collected works. More to come
Powell makes clear that Mrs. Benjamin and Mister Decker are prisoners in an imaginary world that they have built in contrast to their flat and tedious daily lives. This is made most conspicuous when Mrs. Benjamin's daughter Helen(a nasty brittle little piece of work ) elopes with a local yokel suitor to escape the clutches of her backwater hometown. Helen unlike the main characters is willing to take action to at least try and pursue a more interesting life.
There are multiple other interesting characters in this novel and Powell creates a masterful death scene for one of her characters that is full of incite. I expect to be reading more Dawn Powell in 2017 as i have bought a Modern library edition of her collected works. More to come
September 16, 2012
While this novel took a little while to get rolling (and is not quite as good as _Dance Night_, its immediate predecessor), bearing with the narrative definitely pays off. Powell's work is so wonderfully complex, dense and deep, that it rewards multiple readings. It also makes plot summaries extremely inadequate: this novel is mainly concerned with memory and how it influences a person's diminishing range of life choices as they grow older, but that theme is far from everything that is going on in this book. This is only the second novel by Dawn Powell I have read but I am so impressed with her amazing intellect, her beautiful writing, her fine eye for character, that she has become of the _THE_ authors of my reading life. I can never let her go; I feel a deep kindred sympathy for Powell as a person and I am in awe of this tremendous talent that was forgotten or overlooked for so many decades.
August 3, 2009
Come Back to Sorrento is a beautifully written, tenderly told, sometimes painfully insightful novel about the stories people make up to give their lives a feeling of purpose, inevitability, and magnificence. Set in small town Ohio, it’s mainly the story of two friends, a soprano who became a wife and mother instead of an acclaimed artist, and a high school music instructor who bases his self worth on a continually recollected year he spent in Paris among writers and musicians. Together the two create such a wonderful ongoing narrative of their lives and talents that they are lost without each other.
December 6, 2015
FIRST LINE REVIEW: "Evenings she sat on the porch hidden from the street by honeysuckle and morning-glory vines, through their tangled foliage she watched the sun go down and grey light change to a black screen on which the vine-leaves gleamed in a silvery frosted pattern." Okay...I gave Dawn Powell two tries/novels...and I'm just not a fan. She writes well enough, but I'm missing characters that I can really care about and in the two novels I've now read, it just ain't happening. I shall not return to her Ohio.
February 26, 2012
I found Dawn Powell's writing perceptive and lovely, but I thought the two main characters were tiresome. The whole point was they were suffering from delusions of grandeur, but she was entirely too successful in drawing them: they were snobby, prideful, full of pretensions, and for the most part, I couldn't stand them. Actually, Connie Benjamin wasn't quite as exasperating as Decker.
I'm going to try another of Dawn Powell's novels...
I'm going to try another of Dawn Powell's novels...
Read
December 5, 2012Compelling but bittersweet story of two aging people whose slight brush with the possibilities they might have had lead them to view themselves as unique and special and better than those around them. Purposely, started with this novel of the author's life in Ohio, in the Western Reserve, which I became interested in after reading many of James Purdy's novels. I had purchased this book and couple others which were about New York.
July 20, 2018
Read in Novels, 1930-1942. In a small Ohio town, a housewife and a music teacher become friends and bond over their unrealized dreams of making it big. Poignant and insightful.
December 14, 2008
This beautiful book is subtler than Powell's New York novels but is a quietly affecting look at Midwestern life during the Depression.
September 28, 2016
When you describe the plot of this book it sounds like nothing, but the characterization is impressive and it leaves an impression.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews