Each story [in Shiloh] … is a recreation of life, in all its quaint, baffling, funny, pathetic inconsequentiality, in one small, obscure corner of the world. Few of her English readers will ever have visited the towns that she describes, few are likely to do so. But it is probable that they will retain the impression that they have made a visit, in some other existence or in a dream, so intense is her evocation….
One of Miss Mason's constant themes is the manner in which, with no decisive snap of the thread, human relationships become unravelled. In some instances, they remain that way; in others, the fabric knits up again, with no apparent effort by either of the parties. In the title story, 'Shiloh', for example, a truck-driver, out of work after an accident, observes, through a haze of marijuana smoke, how his tough, independent wife is slowly receding from him, in a new-found interest first in body-building and then in English composition. When he takes her to the Civil War battlefield of Shiloh, she, in effect, vanishes out of sight, leaving him with the desolating sense that, just as he has never understood the inner workings of history that erupted in so much carnage, so he has never understood the inner workings of the marriage that is now causing his own living death.
This is a free excerpt of 224 words. There are 540 words (approx.
2 pages at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
Read the rest of this Criticism with our Mason, Bobbie Ann 1940–: Critical Essay by Francis King Access Pass.
