Winter Tales

I really liked these stories, especially Elmeness. This book is easy to read and I enjoyed spending an afternoon reading it. I’d recommend it!

Short stories are not a genre I usually enjoy. Many seem to be just excerpts in time leaving me frustrated and wanting and I like a story to have a beginning, a middle and an ending, no matter how short. So I was very impressed that Kenneth Steven’s stories in this little book had just that; each with an ethereal almost magical atmosphere evoking the beauty and serenity, as well as the cold, dark, bleakness of winter.

Some were very short, some much longer, and they were set in different places - America, Finland, Germany, Russia. I liked the Scottish ones best: “Cullen Skink” a story about a grandfather making soup with his grandson as a healing for the tragic loss of a son and father made me picture the wildness of a winter storm and the sanctuary of home in in North East Scotland, “A Christmas Child” a simple but touching little tale about something positive coming about from the terrible wrecking of a vessel by local villagers, and “The Gift”, another winter take about travellers and mistletoe and celebrating a way of life.

Some delivered a surprise - “The Song of a Robin” and “The Miracle”. I found “Out” plain amusing. Some were very poignant and sad with themes of war, loss, pain and hopelessness, but everyone of them made you pause and think and appreciate.

I believe Kenneth Steven is a poet and it certainly comes through because some sentences were incredibly spare, but spot on and very poetic, making me wish I could sum things up so perfectly.

A lovely to book to snuggle up with on a cold winters day.

This is the perfect collection of winter stories. They run deeper than mere fables, which I appreciated and enjoyed.

‘Winter Tales’ is a collection of short stories from poet, children’s author, novelist and translator Kenneth Steven.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the author apparently lives in Argyll, which is just North of where I am on the West Coast of Scotland, so admittedly this may have enhanced the reading experience for me personally (you had me at “The sea was a living cauldron”)

Elemental influences are felt in Steven’s writing, while at the same time invoking cosy, domestic atmospheres – poetic snapshots of life that are poignant in their simplicity, as all short stories should be. These ‘Winter Tales’ work beautifully as a collection and, as described by the publisher, each is enriched by the reading of the other.
The changing of the seasons and human emotion go hand in hand, as far as I’m concerned, and Kenneth Steven encapsulates this beautifully.

5/5*

~Received from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I am not associated with the author or publisher in any way. My opinion is completely unbiased and entirely my own~

I am torn in my review of these stories. Undoubtedly the author can write, and the language is beautiful. In that regard, each story is a jewel. And yet., after the first four or five stories, I found myself reluctant to pick the book up. Too melancholy, too downbeat, too cloying? Lacking warmth, perhaps, which in a winter collection should come as no surprise. An interesting choice for students of creative writing; as a winter read to curl up with, not so much..