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Eight Stories
Collected here are eight particularly enjoyable Dylan Thomas stories, stories hailed by The New Statesman as "the unself-conscious classics, compassionate, fresh, and very funny... radiating enthusiasm and delight in the telling." This story collection includes The End of The River, The School for Witches, The Peaches, Just Like Little Dogs, Old Garbo, One Warm Saturday, Plenty of Furniture, The Followers
96 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1993
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About the author
Dylan Thomas
587 books1,410 followersDylan Marlais Thomas (1914-1953) was a Welsh poet who wrote in English. Many regard him as one of the 20th century's most influential poets.
In addition to poetry, Thomas wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, with the latter frequently performed by Thomas himself. His public readings, particularly in America, won him great acclaim; his booming, at times, ostentatious voice, with a subtle Welsh lilt, became almost as famous as his works. His best-known work includes the "play for voices" Under Milk Wood and the celebrated villanelle for his dying father, "Do not go gentle into that good night." Appreciative critics have also noted the superb craftsmanship and compression of poems such as "In my craft or sullen art" and the rhapsodic lyricism of Fern Hill.
In addition to poetry, Thomas wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, with the latter frequently performed by Thomas himself. His public readings, particularly in America, won him great acclaim; his booming, at times, ostentatious voice, with a subtle Welsh lilt, became almost as famous as his works. His best-known work includes the "play for voices" Under Milk Wood and the celebrated villanelle for his dying father, "Do not go gentle into that good night." Appreciative critics have also noted the superb craftsmanship and compression of poems such as "In my craft or sullen art" and the rhapsodic lyricism of Fern Hill.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 26, 2017
I'm not sure that I'll finish this - I've read quite a bit of it, left it the other side of the world...I seem to have been disappointed by it compared with most readers. My fault?
November 6, 2021
If I’d known Thomas was such a stunningly splendid prose stylist I’d have read this sooner. Will have to seek out the longer prose works.
December 18, 2024
This was a good read. The first 3 stories were interesting but slow. The last two stories (Plenty of Furniture & The Followers) were my favorite. The first paragraph of Plenty of Furniture is an ode to Mrs Kim in Gilmore Girls. Thomas mentioned birds and bathing a lot. And slitting throats. And taking glasses off to be beautiful.
“Now every one knew. Love had grown up in an evening.” - One Warm Saturday
“I was so aware of me myself in the exact middle of a living story, and my body was my adventure and my name.” - The Peaches
“Now every one knew. Love had grown up in an evening.” - One Warm Saturday
“I was so aware of me myself in the exact middle of a living story, and my body was my adventure and my name.” - The Peaches
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February 26, 2020I found these really confusing like something You would read for a modern Lit Class. The wording isn't complicated but I had a hard time grasping the meaning of the stories.
February 1, 2021
only really liked "a school for witches." Dylan Thomas for sure has a unique style, but it's not necessarily for me.
January 6, 2013
This is one of the best, if not the best short story collection I’ve ever read. Dylan Thomas is so skilled at setting the scene in a way that is vivid, poetic, and awe inspiring. Both my amazement and my envy of his literary abilities increased with every word I read.
I also appreciated the varied lengths of his stories. One of my favourites, “The School for Witches” was only a few pages long, but no less effective than the longest story of the eight. His descriptions were so curious and unique, but so clear at the same time. He didn’t simply lay out the setting, events, and characters of each story, he used words to construct an almost palpable atmosphere. You can see this in all of his stories as he describes rainy late night streets and bars.
I also loved “Plenty of Furniture” because of its strange almost surreal quality.
The following are some of my favourite quotes/ passages from the book:
"The day was beautiful. Clouds sailed on the sky. There was a warm sun."
"I thought that I had been walking long, damp passages all my life, and climbing stairs in the dark, alone."
"I cupped a match to let them see my face in a dramatic shadow, my eyes mysteriously sunk, perhaps, in a startling white face, my young looks savage in the sudden flicker of light, to make them wonder who I was as I puffed my last butt and puzzled about them. Why was the soft-faced young man, with his tame devil’s eyebrows, standing like a stone figure with a glow-worm in it? He should have a nice girl to bully him gently and take him to cry in the pictures, or kids to bounce around in a kitchen on Rodney street."
"I was a lonely nightwalker and a steady stander-at-corners. I liked to walk through the wet town after midnight, when the streets were deserted and the window lights out, alone and alive on the glistening tramlines in dead and empty HIgh Street under the moon, gigantically sad in the damp streets by ghostly Ebenezer Chapel. And I never felt more a part of the remote and overpressing world, or more full of love and arrogance and pity and humility, not for myself alone, but for the living earth I suffered on..."
"I wore my cigarette as he did, a hanging badge of bad habits."
"...and all the time I thought of the paragraphs I would never write. I’ll put you all in a story by and by."
"I liked the taste of beer, its live, white lather, its brass-bright depths, the sudden world through the wet brown walls of the glass, the titled rush to the lips and the slow swallowing down to the lapping belly, the salt on the tongue, the foam at the corners."
"Unashamed and uncertain, he smiled at her; and, though he was prepared for all, her answering smile made his fingers tremble again, as they had in the Gardens, and reddened his cheeks and drove his heart to a gallop."
"We both sighed.
‘Oh, for our vanished youth,’ I said."
I also appreciated the varied lengths of his stories. One of my favourites, “The School for Witches” was only a few pages long, but no less effective than the longest story of the eight. His descriptions were so curious and unique, but so clear at the same time. He didn’t simply lay out the setting, events, and characters of each story, he used words to construct an almost palpable atmosphere. You can see this in all of his stories as he describes rainy late night streets and bars.
I also loved “Plenty of Furniture” because of its strange almost surreal quality.
The following are some of my favourite quotes/ passages from the book:
"The day was beautiful. Clouds sailed on the sky. There was a warm sun."
"I thought that I had been walking long, damp passages all my life, and climbing stairs in the dark, alone."
"I cupped a match to let them see my face in a dramatic shadow, my eyes mysteriously sunk, perhaps, in a startling white face, my young looks savage in the sudden flicker of light, to make them wonder who I was as I puffed my last butt and puzzled about them. Why was the soft-faced young man, with his tame devil’s eyebrows, standing like a stone figure with a glow-worm in it? He should have a nice girl to bully him gently and take him to cry in the pictures, or kids to bounce around in a kitchen on Rodney street."
"I was a lonely nightwalker and a steady stander-at-corners. I liked to walk through the wet town after midnight, when the streets were deserted and the window lights out, alone and alive on the glistening tramlines in dead and empty HIgh Street under the moon, gigantically sad in the damp streets by ghostly Ebenezer Chapel. And I never felt more a part of the remote and overpressing world, or more full of love and arrogance and pity and humility, not for myself alone, but for the living earth I suffered on..."
"I wore my cigarette as he did, a hanging badge of bad habits."
"...and all the time I thought of the paragraphs I would never write. I’ll put you all in a story by and by."
"I liked the taste of beer, its live, white lather, its brass-bright depths, the sudden world through the wet brown walls of the glass, the titled rush to the lips and the slow swallowing down to the lapping belly, the salt on the tongue, the foam at the corners."
"Unashamed and uncertain, he smiled at her; and, though he was prepared for all, her answering smile made his fingers tremble again, as they had in the Gardens, and reddened his cheeks and drove his heart to a gallop."
"We both sighed.
‘Oh, for our vanished youth,’ I said."
July 24, 2012
Loved this, loved this. So glad my brother Joe introduced me to Thomas. His storywriting style is fantastic, very inspiring. His sentences and structure never cease to amaze me, his descriptions and ability to put to paper certain scenarios/feelings that are difficult to capture (e.g. a nightly progression into a barely-remembered drunken stupor).
My favorite was "One Warm Saturday"--amazing. Also "Plenty of Furniture," "The Followers," "The Peaches," all of them.
My favorite was "One Warm Saturday"--amazing. Also "Plenty of Furniture," "The Followers," "The Peaches," all of them.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews