What do You think about The Woman Who Gave Birth To Rabbits: Stories (2003)?
Donoghue uses Irish and English historical events, anecdotes, to imagine situations (her stories) that would justify or illustrate them. At the end of each story she gives us her references (books, letters, documents) on which she based her recreations. It is not clear what is her purpose, what is Donoghue trying to tell us: That she knows how to research her sources? That she is not inventing too much? That she has this special ability to fill the gaps of history with her imagination? That history reads like literature (we know that) or that literature complements and supplements history (we also know that)? Or is it because of what she writes on page 228: "History always becomes a cartoon, where it survives at all. Your best hope for a ride towards posterity is the bandwagon of folklore"? She does not need those erudite notes at the end to validate her stories, which should stand on their own. Her editor should have convinced her of eliminating all those references to factual reality. Or place them at the beginning of the story, at least, so the reader assumes her/his task from the start, with less subterfuges. Donoghue's style does not convince me either. In some stories she experiments with the narration and that only adds to the readers's confusion and frustration.There are some inexcusable mistakes: spelling Raskin for Ruskin, the British art critic, for example (page 110)...
—Eduardo
I had to buy this book. I had been captivated by the story of Mary Tofts last year after reading a tiny piece in the paper about her, and her mysterious ability to birth pieces of dead baby rabbits. It's a fascinating tale. I fully understand why Emma Donoghue was fascinated with her. I was too. What's not to be fascinated about? Mary was an illiterate 18th century maid who started birthing bits of dead rabbits. Perhaps because I was familiar with Mary's story, I was disappointed with Emma Donoghue's imaginings of her story- only because it differed from mine I suspect. The other stories in this collection weren't based on stories that I knew. Some were better than others of course. I particularly enjoyed Revelations, a story about an 18th century doomsday cult- it was absolutely gripping. I also really enjoyed Cured, a story of unusual 19th century surgeon who thought that he could cure a vast range of female ailments by a rather unique operation. Well worth tracking down and reading.My inspiration to read this bookhttp://astrongbeliefinwicker.blogspot...
—Louise (A Strong Belief in Wicker)
I read Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins recently, but I think this collection is better, partly because there's no awkward linking of the stories together and I found the subject matter more interesting. This is probably one of the better short stories collection I've read, simply because I didn't find any true duds in it, although some stories didn't work for me as well as others.My absolute favourite story in this book has to be 'How a Lady Dies'. The imagery of Bath as a place for the dying is so different from my own mental images of Bath (which after visiting is a place I'd happily live) but Donoghue made me believe in it. While I am not dying of consumption with the woman I love married to another, Elizabeth's love for Frances and her waiting to die spoke to me, and one particular line got me in the gut in my current circumstances. She cannot remember how she got through the days before Bath, before London, how she bore the weight of her short life without Frances to share it. And still less can she conceive of how she is to live, in a week or a month or two at most, when Frances and her family will go back to Dublin.The other stories that I particularly liked were 'The Fox on the Line', which shows so beautifully the pain of fighting for something and essentially failing despite all your hard work, 'Night Vision', ("The Minister must be wrong. Didn't I live, when bigger children died of the same fever? This must mean I have been chosen for something. There must be another future for me, if I'm not to be a woman like other women and have twelve children. If I do not grow up to be a poet, then what does that all mean?") 'Salvage', 'Cured', 'A Short Story', 'The Necessity of Burning' and 'Looking for Petronilla', which surprised me with its ending - I initially thought the narrator was an author insert.
—Boorrito
