My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead: Great Love Stories, from Chekhov to Munro

My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead is a compilation of short stories selected by Jeffrey Eugenides, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of Middlesex. Above all, Eugenides' collection is thoughtful; these stories span the globe and the centuries, creating a diverse and provocative reading experience. Unlike many story compilations, there are no `dogs' mixed up in this one. Each story is a gem in its own right. But readers should approach My Mistress's Sparrow with caution. Although the ostensible theme of this compilation is love, there's very little here that conforms to our idea of sweet, romantic love. Rather, these stories capture the underbelly of love: the agony of unrequited passion, the uncertainty of moral ambiguity, and the detritus of failed relationships. This collection was released right around Valentine's Day. I feel sorry for the poor suckers who gifted this to their sweethearts, hoping to make a good (and romantic) impression.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jeffrey Eugenides (MIDDLESEX) edited a Valentine's Day 2008 collection of love stories entitled MY MISTRESS'S SPARROW IS DEAD (the title is derived from the work of Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus). The book's cover features an anatomical heart, indicating that this is not your standard Valentine's Day mush. The editor describes the collection as such: "A love story can never be about full possession. The happy marriage, the requited love, the desire that never dims -- these are lucky eventualities but they aren't love stories. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name." Stories by classic authors such as Anton Chekhov, Vladimir Nabokov, and William Trevor are included, but the collection also includes works by literary talents of the moment like Miranda July and and Lorrie Moore. Love topics include adultery ("How to Be an Other Woman" and "Lovers of Their Time"), forbidden love ("The Moon in Its Flight" and "Spring in Fialta"), and celebrated, ambiguous stories of love such as Chekhov's "The Lady with the Little Dog." There are a total of 27 stories in all - plenty of material to cure any reader's broken heart or fend off thoughts of an affair. All proceeds from of the sale of this book fund the free youth writing programs offered by 826 Chicago.

If you purchase "My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead" you not only obtain a wonderfully entertaining yet complex anthology of "love" stories, you also contribute to a worthy charity that supports budding writers. Win-Win! I picked up this anthology expecting to just dip in and out of it, but the selections are so engrossing and lively that I was instantly mesmerized. Another reviewer has wisely pointed out that these aren't all "happily ever after" love stories - far from it. They are BETTER than anything trite and saccharine. Best yet, these classics can be read over and over. Bravo Jeffrey!

Jeffrey Eugenides titled this book from a Latin poet, Catullus (84 BC), who wrote a poem which includes the title line in translation. It's a foreshadowing of the themes of the collected stories within, themes involving the bittersweet, well that's an understatement, aspects of love. Love affairs are often just that -- affairs. Eugenides remarks that Catullus' poems "speak to the stories in this collection that burn, dazzle, delight or sadden, depending." This anthology of 26 short stories by authors such as William Faulkner, James Joyce, Guy de Maupassant, Mary Robison, Eileen Chang, and Alice Munro among others is carefully edited by Eugenides. He has undertaken this project for charitable proceeds; indeed, all proceeds from My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead will go directly to fund the free youth-writing programs offered by 826 Chicago, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 - 18 with their creative and expository writing skills and to help teachers inspire their students to write. A passage in the introduction hints at a possible reason Eugenides felt compelled to put this collection together: "...I can still hear our Latin teacher, Miss Ferguson, piping out in her most piercing sparrow's voice, "passer pipiabat," getting us to notice how much the plosive rhythm resembled a bird singing. That words were music, that, at the same time they were marks on a page, they also referred to things in the world and, in skilled hands, took on properties of the things they denoted, was for me, at fifteen, an exciting discovery, all the more notable for the fact that this poetic effect had been devised by a young man dead for two thousand years, who'd sent this phrase drifting down the centuries to reach me in my Michigan classroom, filling my American ears with the sound of Roman birdsong..." The reader is treated to a loose translation of "passer pipiabat" by Eugenides -- "Better a sparrow, living or dead, than no birdsong at all." I recommend this collection with the notice that one not expect happily-ever-afters. It can be disturbing, thought-provoking, and heartbreaking. For instance, the first two I read, one by Grace Paley and one by Lorrie Moore, were somber and vaguely depressing. Another plus: all of the contributors have a short bio in the appendix. The cover art is amazing and creative.