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Saturday Lunch With The Brownings And Other Stories
A family Sunday, a holiday in Rome, a maternity hospital...territory as familiar and as unsafe as an earthquake zone.
Author of The Pumpkin Eater and The Handyman, Penelope Mortimer writes with brilliant precision and quivering tension of the tides of passion and despair that lurk at the bottom of everyday life.
Author of The Pumpkin Eater and The Handyman, Penelope Mortimer writes with brilliant precision and quivering tension of the tides of passion and despair that lurk at the bottom of everyday life.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
190 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1960
12 people are currently reading
390 people want to read
About the author
Penelope Mortimer
32 books72 followersEarly life
She was born in Rhyl, Flintshire, Wales, the younger child of an Anglican clergyman, who had lost his faith and used the parish magazine to celebrate the Soviet persecution of the Russian church. He also sexually abused her. Her father frequently changed his parish, so, consequently, she attended numerous schools. She left University College, London, after only one year.
Adulthood
She married Charles Dimont, a journalist, in 1937, and they had two daughters, including the actress Caroline Mortimer, and two daughters through extra-marital relationships with Kenneth Harrison and Randall Swingler.
She met barrister and writer John Mortimer while pregnant with the last child and married him in 1949. Together they had a daughter and a son.
She had one novel, Johanna, published under her name, Penelope Dimont, then as Penelope Mortimer, she authored A Villa in Summer (1954; Michael Joseph). It received critical acclaim. More novels followed.
She was also a freelance journalist, whose work appeared regularly in The New Yorker. As an agony aunt for the Daily Mail, she wrote under the nom de plume Ann Temple. In the late 1960s, she replaced Penelope Gilliatt as film critic for The Observer.
Her marriage to John Mortimer was difficult. They both had frequent extramarital affairs. Penelope had six children by four different men. They divorced in 1971. Her relationships with men were the inspiration for the novels, Daddy's Gone A-Hunting (1958; republished in 2008 by Persephone Books) and The Pumpkin Eater (1962; reissued in 2011 by New York Review Books), which was adapted for the screen by Harold Pinter. It starred Peter Finch, James Mason and Anne Bancroft, who won an Oscar nomination for her role.
Mortimer continued in journalism, mainly for The Sunday Times, and also wrote screenplays. Her biography of the Queen Mother was commissioned by Macmillan, but when completed, it was rejected so instead Viking published it in 1986. Her former agent Giles Gordon in his Guardian obituary called it "the most astute biography of a royal since Lytton Strachey was at work. Penelope had approached her subject as somebody in the public eye, whose career might as well be recorded as if she were a normal human being."
She wrote two volumes of autobiography, About Time: An Aspect of Autobiography, covering her life until 1939, appeared in 1979 and won the Whitbread Prize, and About Time Too: 1940–78 in 1993. A third volume, Closing Time, is unpublished.
She died from cancer, aged 81, in Kensington, London, England.
Novels
Johanna (1947) (as Penelope Dimont)
A Villa in Summer (1954)
The Bright Prison (1956)
Daddy's Gone A-Hunting (1958)
The Pumpkin Eater (1962)
My Friend Says It's Bulletproof (1968)
The Home (1971)
Long Distance (1974)
The Handyman (1983)
Short story collections
Saturday Lunch with the Brownings (1977)
Humphrey's Mother
Autobiographies
About Time: An Aspect of Autobiography (1979)
About Time Too: 1940–78 (1993)
Biography
Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother (1986), revised edition published in 1995, subtitled An Alternative Portrait Of Her Life And Times
Travel writing
With Love and Lizards (co-authored with John Mortimer, 1957)
She was born in Rhyl, Flintshire, Wales, the younger child of an Anglican clergyman, who had lost his faith and used the parish magazine to celebrate the Soviet persecution of the Russian church. He also sexually abused her. Her father frequently changed his parish, so, consequently, she attended numerous schools. She left University College, London, after only one year.
Adulthood
She married Charles Dimont, a journalist, in 1937, and they had two daughters, including the actress Caroline Mortimer, and two daughters through extra-marital relationships with Kenneth Harrison and Randall Swingler.
She met barrister and writer John Mortimer while pregnant with the last child and married him in 1949. Together they had a daughter and a son.
She had one novel, Johanna, published under her name, Penelope Dimont, then as Penelope Mortimer, she authored A Villa in Summer (1954; Michael Joseph). It received critical acclaim. More novels followed.
She was also a freelance journalist, whose work appeared regularly in The New Yorker. As an agony aunt for the Daily Mail, she wrote under the nom de plume Ann Temple. In the late 1960s, she replaced Penelope Gilliatt as film critic for The Observer.
Her marriage to John Mortimer was difficult. They both had frequent extramarital affairs. Penelope had six children by four different men. They divorced in 1971. Her relationships with men were the inspiration for the novels, Daddy's Gone A-Hunting (1958; republished in 2008 by Persephone Books) and The Pumpkin Eater (1962; reissued in 2011 by New York Review Books), which was adapted for the screen by Harold Pinter. It starred Peter Finch, James Mason and Anne Bancroft, who won an Oscar nomination for her role.
Mortimer continued in journalism, mainly for The Sunday Times, and also wrote screenplays. Her biography of the Queen Mother was commissioned by Macmillan, but when completed, it was rejected so instead Viking published it in 1986. Her former agent Giles Gordon in his Guardian obituary called it "the most astute biography of a royal since Lytton Strachey was at work. Penelope had approached her subject as somebody in the public eye, whose career might as well be recorded as if she were a normal human being."
She wrote two volumes of autobiography, About Time: An Aspect of Autobiography, covering her life until 1939, appeared in 1979 and won the Whitbread Prize, and About Time Too: 1940–78 in 1993. A third volume, Closing Time, is unpublished.
She died from cancer, aged 81, in Kensington, London, England.
Novels
Johanna (1947) (as Penelope Dimont)
A Villa in Summer (1954)
The Bright Prison (1956)
Daddy's Gone A-Hunting (1958)
The Pumpkin Eater (1962)
My Friend Says It's Bulletproof (1968)
The Home (1971)
Long Distance (1974)
The Handyman (1983)
Short story collections
Saturday Lunch with the Brownings (1977)
Humphrey's Mother
Autobiographies
About Time: An Aspect of Autobiography (1979)
About Time Too: 1940–78 (1993)
Biography
Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother (1986), revised edition published in 1995, subtitled An Alternative Portrait Of Her Life And Times
Travel writing
With Love and Lizards (co-authored with John Mortimer, 1957)
Ratings & Reviews
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Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
September 21, 2022
Quiet, understated, and often quietly devastating, miniature portraits of motherhood, childhood and family relations dominate Penelope Mortimer’s stories in this collection from the sixties – the majority originally published in the New Yorker. The sense of reality’s intensified by Mortimer’s own admission that she drew extensively on her family and conflict-ridden marriage to fellow writer John Mortimer.
Penelope Mortimer’s gaze is relentless and tightly focused, whether she’s examining maternal anxiety, children’s powerlessness, the fantasy versus the reality of the everyday in the brilliantly-drawn title piece, or the perils of comparing our relationships to other more carefully-curated, seemingly-perfect couples. Examining’s probably too neutral a term for Mortimer’s writing, ruthless dissection’s more fitting: there’s a pervasive atmosphere of overwhelming tension, strong emotions that may erupt at any moment, rage and cruelty lurking under every surface. Mortimer’s central characters may be well-heeled, well-educated, outwardly privileged but they’re often barely surviving, desperately projecting rapidly-fading images of control, slowly suffocating in their fractured, fragmented domestic realms. But Mortimer also provides wonderfully-detailed, fascinating glimpses of a segment of English society in the sixties, like an anthropologist expertly charting their strange habits and customs; while her stylish, accomplished and often witty prose tempers the darker aspects of her vision.
Penelope Mortimer’s gaze is relentless and tightly focused, whether she’s examining maternal anxiety, children’s powerlessness, the fantasy versus the reality of the everyday in the brilliantly-drawn title piece, or the perils of comparing our relationships to other more carefully-curated, seemingly-perfect couples. Examining’s probably too neutral a term for Mortimer’s writing, ruthless dissection’s more fitting: there’s a pervasive atmosphere of overwhelming tension, strong emotions that may erupt at any moment, rage and cruelty lurking under every surface. Mortimer’s central characters may be well-heeled, well-educated, outwardly privileged but they’re often barely surviving, desperately projecting rapidly-fading images of control, slowly suffocating in their fractured, fragmented domestic realms. But Mortimer also provides wonderfully-detailed, fascinating glimpses of a segment of English society in the sixties, like an anthropologist expertly charting their strange habits and customs; while her stylish, accomplished and often witty prose tempers the darker aspects of her vision.
March 3, 2021
A year or so ago I read Mortimer's novel, The Pumpkin Eater, and loved it so much my husband bought me this collection of her short stories first published in 1960 and republished by Daunt Books. Just as with The Pumpkin Eater, Mortimer is brilliant at putting family life under the microscope. In the title story (isn't it a great title?) it is just another ordinary Saturday lunchtime, but the Brownings are a family teetering at the edge of implosion. In the opening story, equally brilliant, a woman travels to a holiday house in France with her five year old son. When she can't get in, she pushes him through a skylight in the roof in order to open a door, but he never makes it to the door. It's wonderfully tense. There were a couple of duds, but I don't mind that, in a collection where I loved the majority. (Note - they are of their time, including some casual racism.)
January 13, 2017
This is another book I picked up thanks to this excellent book list article in the TLS.
The stories in this collection depict some rather everyday mundane events in an incredibly emotionally vivid way, casting a series of harrowing pictures of depressed and oppressed women and girls in unpleasant relationships. The was made all the more poignant when I looked up Penelope Mortimer's obituary online and discovered that much of this was semi-autobiographical.
There is one bit of quite shocking casual racism in one of the stories which threw me out of the narrative. And one of the stories featured some unsettling animal neglect which I just couldn't stomach. (how is it that I can manage to read about people being shits to other humans but I couldn't stomach the animal cruelty?) Apart from these two bits, this is an extremely well written and evocative collection - just have something or someone cheerful on hand to pick you back up afterwards.
The stories in this collection depict some rather everyday mundane events in an incredibly emotionally vivid way, casting a series of harrowing pictures of depressed and oppressed women and girls in unpleasant relationships. The was made all the more poignant when I looked up Penelope Mortimer's obituary online and discovered that much of this was semi-autobiographical.
There is one bit of quite shocking casual racism in one of the stories which threw me out of the narrative. And one of the stories featured some unsettling animal neglect which I just couldn't stomach. (how is it that I can manage to read about people being shits to other humans but I couldn't stomach the animal cruelty?) Apart from these two bits, this is an extremely well written and evocative collection - just have something or someone cheerful on hand to pick you back up afterwards.
September 22, 2020
3.5 rounded up
Some excellent short stories in here - and a few which didn't do much for me, hence rounding my rating down. Mortimer absolutely nails domestic life and the trials and tribulations brought about by it. I'll definitely be reading more of her work.
Some excellent short stories in here - and a few which didn't do much for me, hence rounding my rating down. Mortimer absolutely nails domestic life and the trials and tribulations brought about by it. I'll definitely be reading more of her work.
November 14, 2021
Penelope Mortimer, you’ve got yourself a fan🤲🤲
April 8, 2023
These stories are full of quiet female rage, written in a time when this was even less acceptable than it is now. Penelope Mortimer writes so brilliantly about the ennui and dissatisfaction of women of her era, feelings of being trapped, having no voice, being both under and overwhelmed by opportunities, marriage and motherhood. The introduction by Lucy Scholes gives perfect context to this re-issue,and a realization just how autobiographical these fictional stories are. Sharp, biting, witty at times, yet full of harsh truths.
August 1, 2022
a glorious exploration of womanhood and a raw and refreshing take on the simple and banal elements of daily life. this collection was extraordinary and something I think I’ll return to again and again for the rest of my life. now to read everything else Mortimer has published…
October 27, 2020
The British writer and journalist Penelope Mortimer is perhaps best known for her 1962 novel The Pumpkin Eater, a semi-autobiographical story of a woman’s breakdown precipitated by the strains of a fractured marriage. Mortimer also drew on her own experiences for Saturday Lunch with the Brownings, a collection of sharply unnerving stories of motherhood, marriage and family relations, many of which uncover the horrors that lie beneath the surface veneer of domestic life. First published in 1960, this excellent collection has recently been reissued by the publishing arm of Daunt Books – my thanks to the publishers and the Independent Alliance for kindly providing a reading copy.
In The Skylight, one of the standout stories in this volume, a mother and her five-year-old son are travelling to France for a family holiday in a remote part of the countryside. The weather is stiflingly hot, conditions that make for a tiring journey, leaving the woman and her child anxious to arrive at their destination (a house they have rented in advance). On arrival, they find the property all locked up with the owners nowhere in sight. The only potential point of access is an open skylight in the roof, too small for the woman to squeeze through but just large enough for the child. So, with no other option at her disposal, the woman proceeds to instruct her son on what to do once she drops him through the skylight. (Luckily, there is a ladder to hand, making it possible for them to reach the open window.)
This is a brilliantly paced story, shot through with a mounting sense of tension as we await the narrative’s denouement. In a tale strongly reminiscent of the work of Daphne du Maurier and Shirley Jackson, much of the horror comes from the imagination – our own visions of what might be unfolding inside the house once the young boy has entered through the skylight. Sound plays a particularly important role here; for instance, the torturous sound of a dripping tap serves to accentuate the intense feeling of unease…
In the silence she heard, quite distinctly, a tap dripping. A regular, metallic drip, like torture. She shouted directions to him, waiting between each one, straining to hear the slightest sound, the faintest answer. The tap dripped. The house seemed to be holding its breath. (p. 21)
To read the rest of my review, please visit:
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2020...
In The Skylight, one of the standout stories in this volume, a mother and her five-year-old son are travelling to France for a family holiday in a remote part of the countryside. The weather is stiflingly hot, conditions that make for a tiring journey, leaving the woman and her child anxious to arrive at their destination (a house they have rented in advance). On arrival, they find the property all locked up with the owners nowhere in sight. The only potential point of access is an open skylight in the roof, too small for the woman to squeeze through but just large enough for the child. So, with no other option at her disposal, the woman proceeds to instruct her son on what to do once she drops him through the skylight. (Luckily, there is a ladder to hand, making it possible for them to reach the open window.)
This is a brilliantly paced story, shot through with a mounting sense of tension as we await the narrative’s denouement. In a tale strongly reminiscent of the work of Daphne du Maurier and Shirley Jackson, much of the horror comes from the imagination – our own visions of what might be unfolding inside the house once the young boy has entered through the skylight. Sound plays a particularly important role here; for instance, the torturous sound of a dripping tap serves to accentuate the intense feeling of unease…
In the silence she heard, quite distinctly, a tap dripping. A regular, metallic drip, like torture. She shouted directions to him, waiting between each one, straining to hear the slightest sound, the faintest answer. The tap dripped. The house seemed to be holding its breath. (p. 21)
To read the rest of my review, please visit:
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2020...
September 6, 2019
Long out of print, Penelope Mortimer’s short story collection opens with ‘The Skylight’, in which a mother arrives with her son on a hot day in France and finds that they have been locked out of their rented holiday home. From start to finish it is an exercise is mounting anxiety, the kind of crack-up at which Shirley Jackson excelled.
Further on, ‘Such a Super Evening’, has the flavour of another mid-century master of the short story: Jean Rhys. A discontented husband and wife play host to a famous married couple, who reveal themselves not to be merely awful, but “terrifying”. What’s unusual is that the famous couple are clearly meant to be portrayals of Penelope Mortimer and her husband, the author John Mortimer. Not since Jean Rhys’s AFTER LEAVING MR MACKENZIE have I read anything so self-lacerating.
Then towards the end there is ‘The White Rabbit’: arguably the best and most thematically complex story in the collection. An eleven year old is briefly reunited with her estranged father who tries to give her a gift, an encounter which disturbs her already fragile sense of self. Again like Shirley Jackson’s best work, the sense of fretfulness is so heightened that it becomes almost hallucinatory; surreal. There’s nothing supernatural, but there is certainly horror.
Not, perhaps, what one might expect to find in a collection with titles like ‘The Parson’ and ‘What a Lovely Surprise’.
Further on, ‘Such a Super Evening’, has the flavour of another mid-century master of the short story: Jean Rhys. A discontented husband and wife play host to a famous married couple, who reveal themselves not to be merely awful, but “terrifying”. What’s unusual is that the famous couple are clearly meant to be portrayals of Penelope Mortimer and her husband, the author John Mortimer. Not since Jean Rhys’s AFTER LEAVING MR MACKENZIE have I read anything so self-lacerating.
Then towards the end there is ‘The White Rabbit’: arguably the best and most thematically complex story in the collection. An eleven year old is briefly reunited with her estranged father who tries to give her a gift, an encounter which disturbs her already fragile sense of self. Again like Shirley Jackson’s best work, the sense of fretfulness is so heightened that it becomes almost hallucinatory; surreal. There’s nothing supernatural, but there is certainly horror.
Not, perhaps, what one might expect to find in a collection with titles like ‘The Parson’ and ‘What a Lovely Surprise’.
May 31, 2021
3.75 stars
There is a dark seam, a crack, running through all of the stories. The author describes conventional mid-century British people in conventional settings (mostly home), but there is always a lurking instability, a rising hysteria, the threat of total breakdown. She hedges her bets when it comes to belief in the enduring structure of the 'happy family'; it is the centre that cannot hold, it is the 'almost' and the 'might' in the sentence. These are stories about unhappy families.
Although I would never suggest that fiction is anything but, anyone who knows a bit about Mortimer's personal/domestic life will see shades of her own experience in these stories. Several of them - particularly 'The Skylight', the titular story and 'Such a Super Evening' - have a hell of an impact.
Mortimer's prose is very much to my taste, but her stories are full of melancholy, betrayal, nervous dissatisfaction and flashes of violence. I admire her work, but it does leave a sour and lingering aftertaste.
It was at times like this, when they were all together and relatively peaceful, that she almost felt that they might make a success of it.
There is a dark seam, a crack, running through all of the stories. The author describes conventional mid-century British people in conventional settings (mostly home), but there is always a lurking instability, a rising hysteria, the threat of total breakdown. She hedges her bets when it comes to belief in the enduring structure of the 'happy family'; it is the centre that cannot hold, it is the 'almost' and the 'might' in the sentence. These are stories about unhappy families.
Although I would never suggest that fiction is anything but, anyone who knows a bit about Mortimer's personal/domestic life will see shades of her own experience in these stories. Several of them - particularly 'The Skylight', the titular story and 'Such a Super Evening' - have a hell of an impact.
Mortimer's prose is very much to my taste, but her stories are full of melancholy, betrayal, nervous dissatisfaction and flashes of violence. I admire her work, but it does leave a sour and lingering aftertaste.
July 28, 2020
I first read these wonderful stories almost fifty years ago and yet they are as sharp and relevant to life today as they were back then. Mortimer was such a stunningly good writer and, although best known for her novels and non-fiction, these short stories display all of her considerable talents. Full of brilliant observation, searingly painful at times but also witty and, yes, funny at others. Short stories have been a neglected form of fiction in recent years but they are perfect for reading in that snatched hour or two in a busy day. Most of these were written for The New Yorker in the late 1950s and it just makes you wish that we had more such outlets for the short story now. But, above all, it makes you wish that Ms. Mortimer had written more of them. If you share my enjoyment of these, do seek out her novels and her two volumes of autobiography (the first of which won The Whitbread Prize) as they display all the same brilliant facets of her writing. Sheer reading pleasure.
February 17, 2022
While certainly not a collection to reach for to lift your spirits, this sharply observed gaggle of caustic observations on stifling domesticity are a joy to read. Mortimer’s style is elegant, and brusque, and cutting, deployed with a minimum of fuss. Knowing even a little about her background —as with The Pumpkin Eater, which this precedes by a couple of years— there’s a strong sense of autobiography in at least one aspect of each of the tales and it combines to create another cumulative portrait of a fascinating woman. Mortimer weaves a thick fug of melancholy into a tapestry of snapshots of lives desperately holding on or grasping for something more.
Read
February 5, 2021Fine indeed
12 short stories which vary in quality from average to excellent. She seems to have the knack here of unsentimentally conveying emotional intelligence. Smart weighted dialogue too where characters say much, yet so concisely. Occasionally a casual deft line or two captures the very natural thing. Fine indeed.
12 short stories which vary in quality from average to excellent. She seems to have the knack here of unsentimentally conveying emotional intelligence. Smart weighted dialogue too where characters say much, yet so concisely. Occasionally a casual deft line or two captures the very natural thing. Fine indeed.
January 8, 2021
I am pleasantly surprised by this book. It was recommended by Jessie Burton, yes, the Jessie Burton. So I decided to read it and I am ever so glad that I did. I ordered the lovely anniversary edition from Daunt books.
This compilation of short stories is an intriguing collection. Each story is different, uniquely interesting. Mortimer tells stories of family dynamics like no one I have read before and I was engaged in each story for various reasons.
I found her writing descriptively eloquent and vivid. The characterisation was impressive considering that each character was intriguing from beginning to end of the story. Each character was also unique. How she packs so much into one short story is impressive. I don’t think I’ve identified with so many characters in one book, ever.
I also enjoyed the variety of stories. Each story being unique and encapsulating a particular issue; alcoholism, loneliness, family dynamics, loss, and grief. All very human emotions and behaviours expressed in Mortimer’s thought provoking tales.
I highly recommend this book as a glimpse of one woman’s perspective on family and being human. She certainly leaves the reader with a thing or two to consider. It’s one of those books you’ll want to revisit and enjoy all over again.
This compilation of short stories is an intriguing collection. Each story is different, uniquely interesting. Mortimer tells stories of family dynamics like no one I have read before and I was engaged in each story for various reasons.
I found her writing descriptively eloquent and vivid. The characterisation was impressive considering that each character was intriguing from beginning to end of the story. Each character was also unique. How she packs so much into one short story is impressive. I don’t think I’ve identified with so many characters in one book, ever.
I also enjoyed the variety of stories. Each story being unique and encapsulating a particular issue; alcoholism, loneliness, family dynamics, loss, and grief. All very human emotions and behaviours expressed in Mortimer’s thought provoking tales.
I highly recommend this book as a glimpse of one woman’s perspective on family and being human. She certainly leaves the reader with a thing or two to consider. It’s one of those books you’ll want to revisit and enjoy all over again.
January 8, 2021
An unusual choice for me-I am not usually drawn to compilations of short stories. This is a re- issue of 1960 collection by Penelope Mortimer and not a “ comfortable “ read. The taut, forensic treatment of familial relationships is painful at times but so well observed.
June 5, 2022
A mixed bag of short stories with some truly memorable ones and some less so. A writer who was celebrated in her time with many of these stories published on the New Yorker. Mad Men came to mind with the sketches of 1950s marriages, often quite bleak and funny simultaneously.
May 14, 2021
Wonderful short stories- love her writing / brilliant observations of character.
May 31, 2023
I'd read some Penelope Mortimer non fiction a long time ago, and enjoyed it. I was less impressed by this short story collection though. It seemed very dated. Disappointing.
September 17, 2023
Excellent. Like all short story collections, some of these appealed to me more than others. Focussing on the domestic, these portrayals of family life are acutely well-observed.
January 6, 2024
Damn, this was a fine collection of short stories. I wasn’t terrible jazzed about her novel, The Pumpkin Eater...but I had read a short story of hers, ‘The Skylight’, in a wonderful/fantastic collection of short stories of assorted forgotten female authors (A Different Sound: Stories by Mid-century Women Writers selected and introduced by Lucy Scholes) and liked it a lot...so I wanted to read this book. And I am glad I did. I highly recommend it! 😊😊😊
This book is available for free reading from The Open Library, I might say... https://openlibrary.org/
Here are the titles of the 12 stores with my ratings and a comment here and there. Most of these short stories were published in The New Yorker so they gotta be good, right? I know William Maxwell was the fiction editor at the time these stories were published...I wonder if he accepted them for publication in the magazine???
1. The Skylight—5 stars
2. Saturday Lunch with the Brownings— 4.5 stars (originally published in The New Yorker, May 9, 1958)
3. Such a Super Evening— 5 stars
4. The King of Kissingdom— 4 stars (originally published in The New Yorker, March 19, 1960)
5. I Told You So—5 stars (originally published in The New Yorker, August 1, 1958)
6. Little Mrs. Perkins— 4 stars (originally published in The New Yorker, April 23, 1960)
7. The Parson— 3.5 stars (originally published in The New Yorker, July 20, 1957)
8. The Man Who Loved Parties — 2 stars
9. The White Rabbit— 4 stars (originally published in The New Yorker, December 12, 1959)
10. Second Honeymoon— 4 stars
11. The Renegade— 3.5 stars (originally published in The New Yorker, March 15, 1958)
12. What a Lovely Surprise — 3.5 stars (originally published in The New Yorker, November 30, 1957)
Reviews (all the reviewers loved it!):
• https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2...
• https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2021/...
• https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2020...
• https://readersretreat2017.wordpress....
• http://review31.co.uk/article/view/73...
This book is available for free reading from The Open Library, I might say... https://openlibrary.org/
Here are the titles of the 12 stores with my ratings and a comment here and there. Most of these short stories were published in The New Yorker so they gotta be good, right? I know William Maxwell was the fiction editor at the time these stories were published...I wonder if he accepted them for publication in the magazine???
1. The Skylight—5 stars
2. Saturday Lunch with the Brownings— 4.5 stars (originally published in The New Yorker, May 9, 1958)
3. Such a Super Evening— 5 stars
4. The King of Kissingdom— 4 stars (originally published in The New Yorker, March 19, 1960)
5. I Told You So—5 stars (originally published in The New Yorker, August 1, 1958)
6. Little Mrs. Perkins— 4 stars (originally published in The New Yorker, April 23, 1960)
7. The Parson— 3.5 stars (originally published in The New Yorker, July 20, 1957)
8. The Man Who Loved Parties — 2 stars
9. The White Rabbit— 4 stars (originally published in The New Yorker, December 12, 1959)
10. Second Honeymoon— 4 stars
11. The Renegade— 3.5 stars (originally published in The New Yorker, March 15, 1958)
12. What a Lovely Surprise — 3.5 stars (originally published in The New Yorker, November 30, 1957)
Reviews (all the reviewers loved it!):
• https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2...
• https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2021/...
• https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2020...
• https://readersretreat2017.wordpress....
• http://review31.co.uk/article/view/73...
June 20, 2025
Thank you Daunt Books once again for a most welcome reissue. I don't read a lot of short-stories but I was hooked from the first paragraph of this collection which contains several small masterpieces. Mortimer's prose sparkles like the scales on the back of a venomous snake. Her angry and frustrated characters muddle through life in a hopeless trance of self-loathing. In "The Skylight" a British mother who's made the ghastly decision of arriving with her little boy ahead of her husband to their rented house on an isolated hill behind the French Riviera finds herself unable to enter the deserted property on an unbearably stuffy day. Desperate to enter the house, she hits upon the scheme of lowering the toddler through a skylight in the hope that he will then be able to open the front door from the inside. As time passes, she gets terrified that he has met with an accident in the unfamiliar house. Eventually it turns out that he just got mesmerized by some toys he found and then fell asleep. "Such a Super Evening" tells of a dowdy, unhappily married and childless couple who get a unique opportunity of inviting a pair of celebrities to dinner. They look up to their guests who are as famous for their books, plays, operas etc as they are for their 8 beautiful children, and somehow hope that knowing the Mathiesons will revitalize their humdrum marriage. What they find is that Philip and Felicity are utterly callous, self-absorbed, at loggerheads with each other, and shameless exploiters of their own children. They are more like circus performers than human beings, except that they don't even notice when their exhausted hosts and fellow guests leave them to their shouting match and go to bed. Epically mismatched couples feature in many of the other stories. Obviously Penelope Mortimer knew a thing or 2 about marital discord but there isn't one redundant word in these 12 stories even if they often circle back on the same themes.
November 9, 2023
All killer, no filler. The versatility is astounding to me. I had never heard of "Little Mrs Perkins" before, but I hope it's ranked alongside Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener," Cheever's "The Swimmer," Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl" or James's "The Turn of the Screw." I hope it's being taught in school. The use of seeing/not seeing alone in that story is hopefully being studied by literary scholars. Off to find out.
June 6, 2023
Stories which are very much of their time, of her class and of her gender but, nonetheless, excellent stories in the main. One can sense the tension long before it boils over and empathise with the put upon housewife and mother.
January 27, 2025
The Skylight: 5/5
Saturday Lunch with the Brownings: 4/5
Such a Super Evening: 4/5
The King of Kissingdom: 3/5
I Told You So: 4.5/5
Little Mrs Perkins: 5/5
The Parson: 2.5/5
The Man Who Loved Parties: 2.5/5
The White Rabbit: 3/5
Second Honeymoon: 3/5
The Renegade: 3/5
What A Lovely Surprise: 4.5/5
Saturday Lunch with the Brownings: 4/5
Such a Super Evening: 4/5
The King of Kissingdom: 3/5
I Told You So: 4.5/5
Little Mrs Perkins: 5/5
The Parson: 2.5/5
The Man Who Loved Parties: 2.5/5
The White Rabbit: 3/5
Second Honeymoon: 3/5
The Renegade: 3/5
What A Lovely Surprise: 4.5/5
January 2, 2021
She was a talented writer and her stories are sharply observed. Sadly, today the events and logistics seem strangely dated while the emotions remain raw and authentic.
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