A review by ben_miller
The Circus in the Attic and Other Stories by Robert Penn Warren

3.0

A mixed bag, which makes sense since it was just something cobbled together in the wake of All the King's Men's success, and these stories were never written with a coherent collection in mind. I like the novellas at either end of the book best, which suggests to me that Warren gets better as his canvas grows larger. Some of the smaller stories, little more than vignettes, didn't work for me. They seemed like writerly experiments more than fully-realized pieces. I did like these, though: "Goodwood Comes Back," "The Patented Gate," "A Christian Education," and "Testament of Flood."