402:. As they climb the baking streets, their wealthy American life falls away until they arrive – a couple of Greeks after all – in Kikitsa's cat-infested apartment. The story continues with the couples circling each other warily in different encounters, until one day, Maro visits Kikitsa by herself. This time, the Alexioi have moved up in the world, Aleko now a successful writer, Kikitsa is thin again, and there is a ban on cats in their lives. Due to the ban, Kikitsa takes up her own sensuality, a girlfriend fling is revisited and the Alexioi find an inspired passion for each other.
266:
his family home where he subtly morphs from a confident businessman, revealing his stingy, mean-spirited ways and that he was married several times before. Like the heat-blasted roses that stand throughout the house, domestic life with
Mortlock petrifies. Eventually Anthea leaves him, returning home on the death of her father. By chance her husband dies in a car accident before changing his will against her and on her inheritance she travels the world, never quite finding what she is looking for.
386:, her main concern is her fragile son Charles who is having a birthday. At first a promising boy, Charles was called back to the family firm where he soon had a breakdown. The letters of the story are unopened mail he protects himself from by stacking it away in a box. Following his withdrawal from involvement with the world, he maintained distance until now, turning 50, he decides to open the letters along with his frightening paranoia.
415:
point for the writer to explore the thoughts of men who knew Daise gathering at the grave, and the family at the dump stirring each other abusively. Daise seems to embody the only person accepting of both sides of the tracks, until a tender truce is played out between Meg and the dumpers' son, Lummy that suggests life will always slip from the controls of social standing.
321:
kids to bash him for that as well. Growing up, he meets Marj with the voice as flat "as the colour of masonite" ( p122) who like his mother, also lacks understanding – except that later, she has intuited the need to erase links with his mother. After his mother dies they marry stalely, while slowly Clay begins to change for the worse, shocking in his eccentricity.
363:. Everyone tells Dionysios to be kind to the daughter, awkward unlovely Titina who becomes the butt of the children's tortures and scorn. Within a few years, the two children meet again as teenagers in reversed roles – Titina, rich, beautiful, charming and based in Paris, is instead generous to Dionysios. After she returns to Paris he finds out her profession.
423:
White's short stories are noted for their multiplicity of symbols, myths, and allegories, as were his longer works of fiction. Critic
Hameeda Hossain says, "In describing the pathos of a slow crumbling of suburban souls, his stories evoke a sense of tragedy... of a whole way of life." Scholar William
371:
It is
Australia 1961 and Miss Slattery, a door to door market researcher for Better Sales Pty Ltd, calls on Tibor Szabor, a Hungarian, whose home is paved with black and white real marble tiles, has a harbour "View", and a mirror ceiling over the mink covered bed. She needs him more than he needs her
320:
Clay
Skerritt is a sensitive boy living with his widowed mother who on a whim, named him after pottery. The kids bash him up because of his unusual name and because he is "different". His unimaginative mother fearing his unconventional nature, has his head shorn to emphasise his maleness, causing the
265:
Anthea
Scudamore, a girl who's very close to her mother and influenced by her tastes, is growing up with few social skills. After staying with friends on an island for the summer, she returns home feeling somehow changed. She marries her father's old friend, Hessell Mortlock – moving away to live in
414:
dealers) – Wal works the dumps. They are planning a day out at
Sarsaparilla dump to avoid a funeral in the street. The Town Councillor's wife, Mrs Hogben prepares to bury her sister Daise Morrow and her daughter Meg is on leave from school for the funeral. The dump is beside the cemetery, a vantage
350:
This is the story of change for people overtaken by the goodness of elderly Miss Docker. Ted
Custance and his wife take her in as a boarder. From charitable beginnings, life with the outspoken Miss Docker becomes even more strained until Mrs Custance arranges for her to move to a home, freeing them
196:
The title comes from the Greek turn of phrase meaning, "the poor unfortunates" (οι καυμενοι ), the burnt ones. White plays on the literal meaning of the title by introducing the motif of burning in most of the stories through sun burn, fire, war, anger, burn-out or hurt to characterise his "elect",
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while she attends to other things. Jum and Eileen are left alone in the lounge room with the recording which starts with the birds, but includes the unwitting sounds of lovemaking in the bush until they hear the voices of the host and his secretary, making them uncomfortable witnesses to a secret
329:
The story opens with Mrs
Pantzopoulos at the dentist. Greeks Poppy and Basil Pantzopoulos plan to have dinner at the house of her friend Sissy. Intellectual Sissy Kamara writes unpublished poetry, encourages artists and lives with her husband Sotos Louloudis of mysterious means. The couples have
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affair. When Nora returns to the room for the last bird calls, they realise it was she who made the recording though she doesn't say so outright. Nora carries on as if nothing has happened while insisting Arch listens to the whole tape with her, another time.
312:, in Geneva, Switzerland. Over tea, he hears the Greek-centred love story of Yanko and his jealous Constantia, of prophecy and Russian glassware, precious for a reason. A vague, oblique story, it keeps him wrapt while they wait for the wife to return.
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friends Arch and Nora
Mackenzie. Preparing to be bored, they meet Arch's secretary Mildred Cullen, as she leaves by taxi, which they consider a luxury. The after-dinner entertainment for the evening is the bird-watching couple's latest recordings of
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to become closer than before in the joint knowledge she would be unbearable to the inmates. Leaving a trail of well-intentioned exposures and unwelcome remarks, Miss Docker goes on to assail the local minister in the final scene.
398:. They start a fight on the way there along a sunburnt street, over her friendship with Kikitsa and Aleko. The fight is along class lines, the friends being impoverished intellectuals and they, wealthy New York
175:
are haunted by feelings of isolation, intense self-examination, and an acute awareness of how they are different from others. The stories follow the theme of loneliness as do the second collection titled
380:"Letters" is a descent into madness. Mrs Ursula Polkinghorn writes to a close family friend on second best paper, engraved with "Wishfort, Sarsaparila, N.S.W." Even while she tries to maintain the
151:
published it in 1968 with reprints in 1972 and 1974. Each story in the collection, whose title refers to people burnt by society, has a reference to burning actually and in metaphor.
359:
Dionysios tells this story in the first person while living with his large well-educated family from
Alexandria when the "inferior" Stavrides family moves in across the street in
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In his 1976 essay, Ingmar Björkstén states that the short story is "not Patrick White's best medium of expression" during his discussion of
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until the bohemian party where she shows her talent with a whip that drives him crazy. But Miss Dimity Slattery is no stranger to change.
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Caught up in storytelling in a mouldering summer house, the middle-aged Greek, Malliakas visits an old friend's contact and
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Walsh describes his dense poetic imagery as penetrating beyond material appearances to "mysterious actuality".
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or concern Greek migrants. The suburb of Sarsaparilla, the setting for several stories, is like
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Americans, Spiro Hajistavros and his wife Maro are calling on the Alexious family in
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and his wife, Nin. The fourth story, "Clay" is also for fellow Australians, satirist
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562:, translated by Stanley Gerson, University of Queensland Press, 1976, pp. 75–8
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514:"Patrick White Criticism – Ingmar Björksten (essay Date 1976)"
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Seven of the stories are set in Australia and four are set in
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is a collection of eleven short stories by Australian writer
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274:"Wagtails" is the visit by Jum and Eileen Wheeler to their
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little in common except that Poppy and Sissy escaped from
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Wal and Mum Whalley are in the "bits and pieces trade" (
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The book is dedicated to the late author and historian
500:, Penguin (Australia), 1974 (before acknowledgements).
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fails the hostess hurriedly replaces it with one of
171:In White's first collection of a series of three,
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558:Ingmar Björkstén, "Short Stories and Plays," in
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168:, but with White's "beadily disapproving gaze".
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555:, Penguin (Australia), 1974. (Fourth edition)
461:Australian Attitudes, Charles Osborne, 1964
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390:The Woman who wasn't Allowed to Keep Cats
248:The Woman who wasn't Allowed to Keep Cats
197:those burnt by society and by existence.
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560:Patrick White: A General Introduction
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342:with their bonds of shared memory.
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325:The Evening at Sissy Kamara's
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233:The Evening at Sissy Kamara's
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897:Works by Patrick White
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701:Memoirs of Many in One
57:Short story collection
782:The Night the Prowler
653:Riders in the Chariot
145:Eyre and Spottiswoode
143:, first published by
66:Eyre and Spottiswoode
16:Book by Patrick White
677:The Eye of the Storm
355:Being Kind to Titina
239:Being Kind to Titina
744:Three Uneasy Pieces
185:Three Uneasy Pieces
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763:Flaws in the Glass
709:The Hanging Garden
693:The Twyborn Affair
685:A Fringe of Leaves
419:Critical reception
30:First edition (UK)
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95:Print (paperback)
84:Publication place
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287:. When the
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546:References
533:Austlit -
519:2008-06-24
483:2008-06-24
285:bell birds
281:lyre birds
261:Dead Roses
221:Dead Roses
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212:(p 114).
147:in 1964.
87:Australia
62:Publisher
859:Big Toys
833:Big Toys
340:refugees
216:Contents
161:Our Town
46:Language
334:in the
310:Cologny
49:English
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861:(1980)
855:(1966)
836:(1977)
828:(1964)
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712:(2012)
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605:Novels
435:Awards
396:Athens
361:Schutz
332:Smyrna
182:, and
156:Greece
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36:Author
793:Plays
448:Notes
412:scrap
192:Title
100:Pages
54:Genre
645:Voss
316:Clay
289:tape
283:and
230:Clay
109:ISBN
78:1964
336:war
164:of
103:316
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