num_pages: 244
description: The short stories of Maeve Brennan are among the finest of our time. Her first collection In and Out of Never-Never Land, appeared several years ago, but by then her reputation had already been established by her many stories published in The New Yorker.Christmas Eve opens with a groups of stories about Herbert's Retreat, a snug community on the Hudson River, not far from New York. Here Miss Brennan deals particularly with a man named Charles Runyon, whose self-satisfaction is as large as his malice. There follows a short, beautiful evocation of New York City on a snowy night. The last six stories in the collection are set in Ireland and they concern two very different families-- the Bagots and the Derdons. Miss Brennan writes about the cohesive strength of ordinary things in family life, about the sad triumph of a last survivor, about the loneliness of a marriage where nothing more can be said. Maeve Brennan's stories make their remarkable achievements in a deceptively calm voice. But they do so with a flash of wit, a magically right detail, and a sudden, illuminating lift of eloquence. Christmas Eve gives the pleasure of reading an accomplished artist in fiction.
language: English
title: Christmas Eve: 13 stories
titlecomplete: Christmas Eve: 13 stories
genres: Ireland, Christmas, Short Stories
ratings_count: 67
publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons