My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead
What:
My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead: Great Love Stories, from Chekov to Munro
Who:
Edited by Jeffrey Eugenides
Where:
Your book emporium of choice
How much:
RRP $29.99
Jeffrey Eugenides knows about love. Dave Eggers, the 'Bono of lit', knew that Jeffrey knew about love, and asked him to compile a book of love stories. In 25 parts, My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead charts that many-splendoured thing from its first flush to its final denouement, from ‘voyeuristic longing to disenchanted entanglement’. Protagonists smoke and screw and sneak around. They fall in love with people they should and people they shouldn’t. They polish the hard nut of their discontent against numberless dusks and tend to the smarting fires of their unrequited lust.
William Trevors’ lovers play out their affair in an abandoned hotel bathroom because they have nowhere else to go. Guy de Maupassant’s six-tentacled menage unfolds in a rowboat on the River Seine. Vladimir Nabokov’s lovely Nina recurs like an idee fixe in the narrator’s life, her body perpetually folded in the shape of a Z, a perpetual cigarette at her lovely mouth. There are tales where love, or the moment of attainment anyway, changes the very fabric of the atmosphere, the elementary particles of the night sky falling into heady new constellations.
The longest stories are like whole lives in reduction; the shortest like precise incisions. This is love in all its lucent, spraddled, finger-sniffing splendour. And it’s wonderful.
By Kate Scott
Format: Book
Genre: Fiction
Keywords: My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead
Random Entries:
Dead Boomers
23rd Sep 09
One of the best pick-up lines I've ever heard (disclaimer: also probably the worst), is 'Have you got spanners in your eyes? Cause you're sure tightening...
Poppy Cakes
5th Feb 09
The New York-style cupcake has arrived good people of Brisbane. It's light, it's fine, it's fluffy and it's moist. Poppy Cakes owner Theo explains that...
581c-Volume 1
2nd Sep 09
Though taken almost exclusively in pitch black conditions, Fäldt's photos have a brightness to them that seem at odds with all that inkiness. It's...
The Room
31st May 10
There's something shameful about mocking bad movies. As Patton Oswalt points out, even the worst movies had a cast and crew who believed in their...
Six Impossible Things Before Dinner
23rd Sep 09
The flyer stated that Six Impossible Things Before Dinner would ‘blow my mind'. Naturally I was intrigued, but also expected the worst. I needn't...
Wilson
25th May 10
Angry young men, angry old men, bitter assholes, condescending pricks... Dan Clowes paints in misanthropy the way ice sculptors chainsaw ice.
Best known...
Siam Square Thai
14th Apr 10
Someone (let's just assume they were very old and very wise and probably Thai) once told me that you can judge the quality of a Thai restaurant by how...
Reality Check, The Teenagers
3rd Jun 08
The American media only invented "the teenager" as recently as the '50s. Yet those melodramatic, erratic, sexy sexy young thangs have come...
Carly Hunter, XI (AW 2010)
30th Mar 10
Hunters' AW 2010 collection, XI, recently showcased at LMFW (how ace are the beard necklaces?), signals some serious game. In XI ribbons hang...
howcast.com
13th Oct 09
Remember Art Attack? The pastel-coloured nineties DIY art show with the gregarious host who helped kids discover the creative potential of pipe cleaners...
Subscribe to our e-newsletter for weekly updates and exclusive stuff:
Browse our guide to Brisbane by interest
Brisbane Events Calendar
Select a date to see what's on in Brisbane
Browse our guide to Brisbane by keyword
Browse our guide to Brisbane by weekly issue
Recently Published
Tomorrow When The War... I Oh You launch Mood in Progress, Louise... Kite Club, Esoterica Violent Green no.2 Surface Tension, Edward... Rolling Stone: The Covers... Exquisite Corpse The IKEA Restaurant FRANKLY! It's a Pop Festival...Random Goodness
Inhabit Fiesta Fafi for M.A.C Cosmetics... Naked City Guide... The Concretes, Hey... Mimicry Of Lines... John Steel Singers... Let the Blind Lead... Aesop's opera gift... Drown In Colour... George's Final Bow...Brisbane Gig Guide
Bands in Brisbane DJs in Brisbane Launches in Brisbane Parties in Brisbane Sales in Brisbane Films in BrisbaneQuick Links
EatDrink - Location - East Brisbane
EatDrink - Location - Inner East
EatDrink - Location - Inner South
EatDrink - Location - Northside
EatDrink - Location - Southside
EatDrink - Location - Western Suburbs
EatDrink - Venue Type - Market
EatDrink - Venue Type - Night Club
EatDrink - Venue Type - Restaurant
Goods - Location - East Brisbane
Goods - Location - Inner South
Goods - Location - Western Suburbs
Goods - Product Type - Accessories
Goods - Product Type - Clothes
Goods - Product Type - Fashion
Goods - Product Type - Gadgets
Look - Gallery Type - Artist-run
Look - Gallery Type - Commercial
Look - Gallery Type - Contemporary Art Space
Look - Gallery Type - Project Space
Look - Location - East Brisbane
Look - Location - Western Suburbs
Out - Event Type - Performance
Out - Location - East Brisbane
Out - Location - Western Suburbs
Read - Genre - Contemporary Culture
Shop - Location - East Brisbane
Shop - Location - Western Suburbs
Shop - Product Type - Accessories
Shop - Product Type - Art/Design
Shop - Product Type - Books & Mags
Stray - Location - Out of Town
Watch - Format - Live/Performance
About
FourThousand is a subcultural guide to Brisbane, published daily and fired by email weekly. It is compiled by an amorphous gaggle of Brisbane writers, stylists, designers and photographers who all like huddling under that big umbrella we like to call creativity. Without editorial independence FourThousand has nothing. All editorial you read is featured because it's worth it - not because it's paid for.
Working
