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oldenglishrose's review
1.0
The Salzburg Tales is a 1930′s take on Chaucer’s famous Canterbury Tales, following the same pattern of a group of strangers meeting (in this case they are all attending the opera at the Salzburg Festival) and deciding to tell stories to pass the time. A 1930′s take on The Canterbury Tales? What’s not to love? Well, quite a bit if I’m honest.
For a start, Stead’s characters are nowhere near as diverse and interesting as Chaucer’s are, and I think that’s partly due to the set up of her frame narrative. Chaucer has his characters meet at a pub prior to going on pilgrimage. Boccaccio in his Decameron which follows the same format has his characters fleeing from the black death in Florence. Religion and death are both great levellers of men, but Austrian opera, strangely enough, is not. As a result, Stead’s characters are all the sort of middle class people who might attend an opera festival and so, although she has a keen eye for detail, there are none of the great individuals like the Miller or the Wife of Bath who stand out. Instead, they’re all much of a muchness. I enjoyed the character portraits when reading them, such as the Banker: 'He would risk half his fortune on a throw, turn head-over-heels in the air in an aeroplane, tell anyone in the world to go to Hell, laugh at princes and throw tax-collectors out the door, but he suffered excessively from toothache because he feared the dentist’s chair: and he was convinced that his luck depended on numbers, events, persons, odd things he encountered; his head accountant was forced to wear the same tie for six weeks because it preserved a liberal state of min in the Government in a difficult time: his chauffeur was obliged to carry the same umbrella, rain, hail or shine, because the umbrella depressed the market in a stock he had sold short.'
Or the Old Lady: 'She wore a long gold chain and a lorgnette and an expensive hat made of satin, feathers, straw and tulle, all mixed and mummified together: no one could imagine what antediluvian stock of unfashionable materials had been drawn upon to make her hat.'
They have enough interesting quirks to make them interesting without making them too contrived, and this was by far my favourite part of the book. However, the character types are all very similar and so even with these little details it becomes impossible to tell them apart, particularly when they do not behave in any manner distinct to their characters after this introduction.
Because the characters are all very similar, so are their stories. There was none of the variety of tone, dialect, register, interests and agenda which make The Canterbury Tales so great. In fact, I didn’t believe that any of these stories was being told by anyone other than Christina Stead herself. They aren’t the stories of the characters described at the beginning, but merely a short story collection stuffed into an unnecessary framework which adds nothing to the reading and understanding of them. This would have been less of a problem had I found the stories themselves enjoyable, but sadly they really weren’t my cup of tea. Very few of them were satisfying on a narrative level, often feeling either tedious and drawn out or as though a large chunk of the middle were missing in order to leap to a conclusion which didn’t make much sense.
I found this book a very frustrating read because I wanted it to be so good.
For a start, Stead’s characters are nowhere near as diverse and interesting as Chaucer’s are, and I think that’s partly due to the set up of her frame narrative. Chaucer has his characters meet at a pub prior to going on pilgrimage. Boccaccio in his Decameron which follows the same format has his characters fleeing from the black death in Florence. Religion and death are both great levellers of men, but Austrian opera, strangely enough, is not. As a result, Stead’s characters are all the sort of middle class people who might attend an opera festival and so, although she has a keen eye for detail, there are none of the great individuals like the Miller or the Wife of Bath who stand out. Instead, they’re all much of a muchness. I enjoyed the character portraits when reading them, such as the Banker: 'He would risk half his fortune on a throw, turn head-over-heels in the air in an aeroplane, tell anyone in the world to go to Hell, laugh at princes and throw tax-collectors out the door, but he suffered excessively from toothache because he feared the dentist’s chair: and he was convinced that his luck depended on numbers, events, persons, odd things he encountered; his head accountant was forced to wear the same tie for six weeks because it preserved a liberal state of min in the Government in a difficult time: his chauffeur was obliged to carry the same umbrella, rain, hail or shine, because the umbrella depressed the market in a stock he had sold short.'
Or the Old Lady: 'She wore a long gold chain and a lorgnette and an expensive hat made of satin, feathers, straw and tulle, all mixed and mummified together: no one could imagine what antediluvian stock of unfashionable materials had been drawn upon to make her hat.'
They have enough interesting quirks to make them interesting without making them too contrived, and this was by far my favourite part of the book. However, the character types are all very similar and so even with these little details it becomes impossible to tell them apart, particularly when they do not behave in any manner distinct to their characters after this introduction.
Because the characters are all very similar, so are their stories. There was none of the variety of tone, dialect, register, interests and agenda which make The Canterbury Tales so great. In fact, I didn’t believe that any of these stories was being told by anyone other than Christina Stead herself. They aren’t the stories of the characters described at the beginning, but merely a short story collection stuffed into an unnecessary framework which adds nothing to the reading and understanding of them. This would have been less of a problem had I found the stories themselves enjoyable, but sadly they really weren’t my cup of tea. Very few of them were satisfying on a narrative level, often feeling either tedious and drawn out or as though a large chunk of the middle were missing in order to leap to a conclusion which didn’t make much sense.
I found this book a very frustrating read because I wanted it to be so good.
tasmanian_bibliophile's review
4.0
‘Salzburg, old princely and archiepiscopal city, and its fortress Hohen-Salzburg, lie among the mountains of the Tyrol, in Salzburg Province, in Austria.’
A chance meeting at the Salzburg Festival, brings together a group of strangers. They have some time on their hands, and decide to tell each other stories. So, over seven days, the members of this group take turns in sharing tales of fantasy and legend, tragedies, parodies and jokes. A more modern rendition of Bocaccio’s ‘Decameron’ or Chaucer’s ‘The Canterbury Tales’? Perhaps, although I’ve never read both in full and so cannot make accurate comparisons.
‘When they reached the outlook over the city and sat down, he began, by accident to relate the history of a humble man who had lived in Salzburg and been a friend of his, and that was the first story told.’
While I found most of the stories interesting, and some utterly absorbing, few of the characters telling the story made much impact on me. They existed, I felt, as vehicles for conveying the story to the reader without themselves being of significance. Or, perhaps, I was so focussed on the stories being told I didn’t pay enough attention to the story teller. One day I’ll reread ‘The Salzburg Tales’, and I’ll pay more attention to the storytellers. I enjoyed Ms Stead’s descriptions of each storyteller (‘The Personages’) but there were so many of them that by the time I’d got to their particular story, I needed to go back. Some of the descriptions I enjoyed included: ‘After them came the ITALIAN SINGER, a gentleman of fifty years or more, with a ravaged wrinkled face, like a mask of tragedy carved in wood; …’ , ‘There came in next the POET. He was tall, spare and ill, with hollow cheeks and eyes.’, and the SOLICITOR ‘He loved a little chat, with a legal joke and a neat personality, and a little cup of tea.’
As I finished reading it, I wondered whether I’d have enjoyed it more if I’d felt that ‘The Personages’ were somehow more connected to the stories they told? I’ve read a couple of Ms Stead’s novels, and enjoyed them, and am slowly reading my way through her published work.
Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Melbourne University Publishing for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book, which was first published in 1934, for review purposes.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
A chance meeting at the Salzburg Festival, brings together a group of strangers. They have some time on their hands, and decide to tell each other stories. So, over seven days, the members of this group take turns in sharing tales of fantasy and legend, tragedies, parodies and jokes. A more modern rendition of Bocaccio’s ‘Decameron’ or Chaucer’s ‘The Canterbury Tales’? Perhaps, although I’ve never read both in full and so cannot make accurate comparisons.
‘When they reached the outlook over the city and sat down, he began, by accident to relate the history of a humble man who had lived in Salzburg and been a friend of his, and that was the first story told.’
While I found most of the stories interesting, and some utterly absorbing, few of the characters telling the story made much impact on me. They existed, I felt, as vehicles for conveying the story to the reader without themselves being of significance. Or, perhaps, I was so focussed on the stories being told I didn’t pay enough attention to the story teller. One day I’ll reread ‘The Salzburg Tales’, and I’ll pay more attention to the storytellers. I enjoyed Ms Stead’s descriptions of each storyteller (‘The Personages’) but there were so many of them that by the time I’d got to their particular story, I needed to go back. Some of the descriptions I enjoyed included: ‘After them came the ITALIAN SINGER, a gentleman of fifty years or more, with a ravaged wrinkled face, like a mask of tragedy carved in wood; …’ , ‘There came in next the POET. He was tall, spare and ill, with hollow cheeks and eyes.’, and the SOLICITOR ‘He loved a little chat, with a legal joke and a neat personality, and a little cup of tea.’
As I finished reading it, I wondered whether I’d have enjoyed it more if I’d felt that ‘The Personages’ were somehow more connected to the stories they told? I’ve read a couple of Ms Stead’s novels, and enjoyed them, and am slowly reading my way through her published work.
Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Melbourne University Publishing for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book, which was first published in 1934, for review purposes.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
tricky's review
5.0
Christina Stead is finally and thankfully going through a revival as new readers are introduced to her works. Australia seems to have a habit of not celebrating its female authors and it is wonderful to see this renewed focus.
Stead in my humble opinion is one of Australia’s greatest authors and having read this novel just seals the deal for me.
A group of strangers have a chance meeting at the Salzburg Festival and over seven days they tell stories. The tales involve tragedy, humour, fantasy and myth. The characters are beautifully realised It is an extraordinary collection of stories and I was moved, engaged and transported into these diverse lives.
The way that Stead captures the elements of a character in her personages’ introduction is just divine ‘her arms were thin, muscular and rough skinned as a shark’s fin with too much exercise.’ There are so many gems like this as they make reading such a joy.
I know I am going on with the platitudes but seriously when you place this book in context, the time it was written (1934) by an Australian female author who was even denied a literary prize based on the grounds that she had been so long overseas that she had ceased to be an Australian. You begin to realise just how much that is a novel of great ambition and I am not sure that any other writer that Stead could have pulled it off. It is an extraordinary piece of work.
Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to review.
Stead in my humble opinion is one of Australia’s greatest authors and having read this novel just seals the deal for me.
A group of strangers have a chance meeting at the Salzburg Festival and over seven days they tell stories. The tales involve tragedy, humour, fantasy and myth. The characters are beautifully realised It is an extraordinary collection of stories and I was moved, engaged and transported into these diverse lives.
The way that Stead captures the elements of a character in her personages’ introduction is just divine ‘her arms were thin, muscular and rough skinned as a shark’s fin with too much exercise.’ There are so many gems like this as they make reading such a joy.
I know I am going on with the platitudes but seriously when you place this book in context, the time it was written (1934) by an Australian female author who was even denied a literary prize based on the grounds that she had been so long overseas that she had ceased to be an Australian. You begin to realise just how much that is a novel of great ambition and I am not sure that any other writer that Stead could have pulled it off. It is an extraordinary piece of work.
Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to review.
brona's review
3.0
I knew straight away that The Salzburg Tales by Christina Stead would be one of those books that demanded more of my attention than I had been used to giving of late.
After several false starts, I sat down one Saturday morning with a cup of tea and a pencil in hand, determined to find my way in.
Careful reading and judicious underlining slowly brought the threads together as I made my way through the Prologue which gave us our sense of time and place, through to The Personages, where Stead introduced us to her storytellers.
Like The Canterbury Tales, her characters are labelled, so that we have The Festival Director, The Viennese Conductor, The Italian Singer, a French Woman, a Doctress, an English Gentleman, a School Teacher, The Poet, a School Girl, A Lawyer and The Philosopher, just to name a few.
And like The Caterbury Tales, Stead set out to write a fairly traditional 'frame tale', whereby one story leads onto the next story and the next, almost like a nesting doll of tales sitting one inside the other....
I enjoyed some of the stories and some of the storytellers more than others. I constantly referred back to The Personages chapter to see if I could make any link between the storyteller's bio and the type of story they told. Sometimes I could, and sometimes I was left scratching my head, perplexed. Sometimes one story feed into the next, but most of the time they didn't.
Stead obviously enjoyed the intellectual exercise that is The Salzburg Tales. I was able to detect versions of well-known fairytales, classical myths and legends and gothic stories not unlike Poe. She was also apparently influenced by Chekhov, Gogol, Balzac, Maupassant, Hoffman & Hawthorne, but as I am not familiar enough with any of these writers, I failed to make the connections.
The thing I missed most whilst reading this book though, was character development.
I realised that I much prefer books with interesting, engaging, evolving characters. Characters that I can get inside of who have complex, nuanced behaviours. I want to be able to walk around in their skin for a while; to see things from another perspective.
Stead's Tales provided entertainment to my intellectual self, but most of them failed to touch my heart or soul.
Full review here - http://bronasbooks.blogspot.com.au/2017/08/the-salzburg-tales-by-christina-stead.html
After several false starts, I sat down one Saturday morning with a cup of tea and a pencil in hand, determined to find my way in.
Careful reading and judicious underlining slowly brought the threads together as I made my way through the Prologue which gave us our sense of time and place, through to The Personages, where Stead introduced us to her storytellers.
Like The Canterbury Tales, her characters are labelled, so that we have The Festival Director, The Viennese Conductor, The Italian Singer, a French Woman, a Doctress, an English Gentleman, a School Teacher, The Poet, a School Girl, A Lawyer and The Philosopher, just to name a few.
And like The Caterbury Tales, Stead set out to write a fairly traditional 'frame tale', whereby one story leads onto the next story and the next, almost like a nesting doll of tales sitting one inside the other....
I enjoyed some of the stories and some of the storytellers more than others. I constantly referred back to The Personages chapter to see if I could make any link between the storyteller's bio and the type of story they told. Sometimes I could, and sometimes I was left scratching my head, perplexed. Sometimes one story feed into the next, but most of the time they didn't.
Stead obviously enjoyed the intellectual exercise that is The Salzburg Tales. I was able to detect versions of well-known fairytales, classical myths and legends and gothic stories not unlike Poe. She was also apparently influenced by Chekhov, Gogol, Balzac, Maupassant, Hoffman & Hawthorne, but as I am not familiar enough with any of these writers, I failed to make the connections.
The thing I missed most whilst reading this book though, was character development.
I realised that I much prefer books with interesting, engaging, evolving characters. Characters that I can get inside of who have complex, nuanced behaviours. I want to be able to walk around in their skin for a while; to see things from another perspective.
Stead's Tales provided entertainment to my intellectual self, but most of them failed to touch my heart or soul.
Full review here - http://bronasbooks.blogspot.com.au/2017/08/the-salzburg-tales-by-christina-stead.html
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