dejah_thoris’s Reviews > The Selected Short Stories of Jack London > Status Update

Flush of Gold focuses on two men and their trek to a woman who has holed up in a cabin waiting for her man to return. I don't remember much about it other than the repetition of her name, Flush of Gold, getting on my nerves as I fell asleep.

Lost Face is an odd choice to end the collection on because it's a tale of a man who escapes torture by exploiting the indigenous people's supernatural beliefs.

That Spot features a dog with a big spot in its coat that loves the narrator and will never stop coming back to him, no matter what the circumstances. A nice refresher.

The Grit of Women is a feminist high-five that compares Sitka's wife with a Yankee travel companion. Jeff slows everyone down, whines like crazy, and barely helps with camp chores wheras Passuk works and suffers without complaint. The ending is very sad though.

To Build a Fire is a classic man vs. nature story where an unnamed protagonist ignores the warnings from an elder about the dangers of hiking alone. (Still applicable!) On the plus side, he's brought a dog.

An Odyssey of the North was about a woman torn from her people that eventually learns to love the man who took her. Meanwhile, a former suitor fights to find and rescue her only to be disappointed when she clings to her abductor.

A Relic of the Pliocene is about encountering a hunter with mammoth skin mukluks, and hearing his story.

The first story, A Thousand Deaths, is Jack writing science fiction. Very odd way to open the collection.