cover image Raving Autumn and Other Stories

Raving Autumn and Other Stories

Victoria Whitehead, Victoria White. Dufour Editions, $12.95 (224pp) ISBN 978-1-85371-077-3

Deft writing and insightful probing give substance to the subtly fabulist world of this Irish author in her first collection of short fiction. White focuses on themes at the heart of female experience. A bride believes that she is loved solely for her beauty and youth, that her happiness depends on how closely she can approximate ``a woman so beautiful that only the richest man in the world could have her for his own,'' and she goes quietly mad. Elsewhere, a 45-year-old artist whose husband has left her for a younger woman has a hallucinatory vision of a Chinese emperor's favorite concubine who found her true fulfillment as a carver of jade after the king rejected her. The artist is inspired to paint her masterpiece of a beautiful, mature female face--her own. The powerful title story tells of a servant in a wealthy home during the Irish Rebellion of 1919 who is torn between loyalty to her rebel lover and to her young mistress. The interplay of emotions and events roils in a complex tapestry of conflicting loves and unexpected betrayals. (Apr.)