Day's End and Other Stories

by H.E. Bates

Originally published in 1928, this was H.E. Bates's first collection of stories. They add up to the sum total of all Bates's published stories up to the age of 23.


Contents:

Day's End
The Baker's Wife
The Birthday
The Shepherd
The Easter Blessing
The Spring Song
The Mother
Fear
The Dove
The Flame
The Holiday
Two Candles
The Fuel-Gatherers
The Father
Gone Away
Harvest
The Barge
The Lesson
The School Mistress
Fishing
Never
Nina
The Voyage
The Idiot
Blossoms

Genres: Short Stories

286 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1928

About the author

Herbert Ernest Bates, CBE is widely recognised as one of the finest short story writers of his generation, with more than 20 story collections published in his lifetime. It should not be overlooked, however, that he also wrote some outstanding novels, starting with The Two Sisters through to A Moment in Time, with such works as Love For Lydia, Fair Stood the Wind for France and The Scarlet Sword earning high praise from the critics. His study of the Modern Short Story is considered one of the best ever written on the subject.

He was born in Rushden, Northamptonshire and was educated at Kettering Grammar School. After leaving school, he was briefly a newspaper reporter and a warehouse clerk, but his heart was always in writing and his dream to be able to make a living by his pen.

Many of his stories depict life in the rural Midlands of England, particularly his native Northamptonshire. Bates was partial to taking long midnight walks around the Northamptonshire countryside - and this often provided the inspiration for his stories. Bates was a great lover of the countryside and its people and this is exemplified in two volumes of essays entitled Through the Woods and Down the River.

In 1931, he married Madge Cox, his sweetheart from the next road in his native Rushden. They moved to the village of Little Chart in Kent and bought an old granary and this together with an acre of garden they converted into a home. It was in this phase of his life that he found the inspiration for the Larkins series of novels -The Darling Buds of May, A Breath of French Air, When the Green Woods Laugh, etc. - and the Uncle Silas tales. Not surprisingly, these highly successful novels inspired television series that were immensely popular.

His collection of stories written while serving in the RAF during World War II, best known by the title The Stories of Flying Officer X, but previously published as Something in the Air (a compilation of his two wartime collections under the pseudonym 'Flying Officer X' and titled The Greatest People in the World and How Sleep the Brave), deserve particular attention. By the end of the war he had achieved the rank of Squadron Leader.

Bates was influenced by Chekhov in particular, and his knowledge of the history of the short story is obvious from the famous study he produced on the subject. He also wrote his autobiography in three volumes (each delightfully illustrated) which were subsequently published in a one-volume Autobiography.

Bates was a keen and knowledgeable gardener and wrote numerous books on flowers. The Granary remained their home for the whole of their married life. After the death of H. E Bates, Madge moved to a bungalow, which had originally been a cow byre, next to the Granary. She died in 2004 at age 95. They raised two sons and two daughters.

primarily from Wikipedia, with additions by Keith Farnsworth

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is a debut collection of stories… The author is young but his stories are already mature and original. 
Day’s End… Rural countryside… An evening of the day and an evening of life…

The struggle, the loneliness and poverty had for ten years been growing worse. Barns were coming down, his stock was wretched, the methods he used were out-of-date – everything revealed ineffectuality and decay. He himself was a man of seventy, an old man.

And now the land he rents is going to be sold… There is nothing to hold on to… All efforts were wasted… And the day’s end turns into the end of life…
The Baker’s Wife… A joyless ride to the fair… Futile remembrance of her past love… The Birthday… Time moves only forward… The Shepherd… A little winter tragedy… The Easter Blessing… A failed help to a homeless woman… The Spring Song is about a brief summer rain and a chance encounter after…

All day the June sky had stretched out in perfect serenity, like an immense blue pond without a ripple or shadow. Beneath it the earth seemed to tremble like a thirsty animal chained just beyond reach of water, while between the trees sat in a sort of solemn imposing lethargy, like judges presiding over some interminable suit between earth and heaven.

Old mother’s love… Little boy’s fear… Captured dove… Waitress’s shift… Train ride… Firewood picking… Father’s grief… Grandfather’s funeral…
No story without a whiff of light sadness…
Two Candles… Summer spent in the country… A gardener’s daughter…

Sometimes when she brought in his candles late at night he had a desire to say something simple and beautiful and earnest to her, but of what it was he hadn’t the faintest notion except that it must draw from her some equally touching and beautiful reply.
Night after night when she brought in his two candles he had that desire and yet said nothing.

It is not enough to see, one also must appreciate what is being seen.

[Jeannette · Rating 1 out of 5]

In his time Bates might have been quite inventive and original, but reading this book from a modern perspective, I was not very touched by the stories. Considering the amount of information we receive daily, a work of fiction, realistic or not, has to be able to influence you very strongly, emotionally or otherwise.
However, none of these stories felt as lively as I expected from such a highly acclaimed author, neither were they very inspired or different than any other author's short stories. It's hard for me to like short stories so I keep trying and trying to find good ones, and most of the time it's a miss. Like this time. But I'll continue my search.

[Meghan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Last night, as I was drifting off to sleep, 88% done Day's End by H. E. Bates (the preciseness of the percent via my kobo), I thought of an adjective that described the book perfectly. I leaned over towards my kobo, but then thought By the time I turn it on the kobo .... Then I kind of hit around to see if there was a pencil. There wasn't. Now I don't remember what the adjective was. I think it begin with an S.

This haziness with my adjectives actually ties back to the book. I'm pretty hazy on Day's End. The book isn't long, and it's full of hodge-podge English pastoral where your mind goes to cozy country cottages with pink and lilac bushes out front and thatched roofs and rolling hills and then thinking of all these things, the stories themselves kind of fade away. Even calling them stories is rather generous; most are scenes detailing the small agonies of the underclass. A waitress being stood up on a date, a shepherd searches out a doctor to attend to his pregnant wife, a man with disabilities is mocked by children in church. It's like a Vanitas painting (I had to look up the term): at first glance everything is bountiful and lively, but a second glance and it's really a painting of fruit rotting and flowers drooping. Transient.

I'm not sure exactly why Day's End's stories are collected together just now. The little blurb at the start of the book tells me that H. E. Bates died in 1974, so maybe the older stories have reached the public domain to be reissued perhaps? There's no information as to when most of the stories were written, but a note is made that some come from the 1920s and 1930s. They don't feel, in style, like the 1920s though, the way, for example, listening to Gershwin feels like the 1920s and 1930s. Maybe because there's no slang. Maybe because adjectives and adverbs are used judiciously. Maybe because there's a core of universality that runs through the stories. But even that can't overcome the haziness. The stories feel like waves washing the seashore; they come and go and lulled me into drowsiness without making that much of an impression. The sea is still the sea. The sand is still the sand. Marcel Proust makes me feel that way too, so at least Bates is in good company.

These are stories for reading in a hammock on a lazy summer day.

Day's End by H. E. Bates went on sale May 14, 2015.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Damaskcat · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of twenty six short stories. As I'd never read anything by this author before it seemed to be a good place to start. Unfortunately this collection has put me off wanting to read anything more by H E Bates.

His evocation of the countryside and rural living is excellent - hence the three stars I have given this book - which is perhaps over-generous. That said, I didn't like any of the characters or the situations they were in. Almost every character is living a life which is making them unhappy and they all refuse to either do anything about it or take the opportunities which are offered them which I found distinctly annoying.

In a way the stories reminded me of the worst of Thomas Hardy and left me with a feeling of depression and the idea that there is nothing good in life. Fortunately that feeling didn't last but I shan't be reading any more books by this author. I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley for review.

[Sheryl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Out of the 26 stories in this short story collection, only 3 really made a mark: Day's End, Gone Away and The Father. These 3 stories deal with desolation, death and hopelessness. Only in these 3 instances did I ultimately feel the desperation and rawness of emotions albeit not too strongly but more so of a solid and quiet sadness. The rest of the stories were much too descriptive to the point of detachment as one gets lost in words with no real meaning. Given the statistics of hit and miss, I would have to give this collection 2 stars.

Note: This E-Book is free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.