Saturday Review: “Regarding Edward:” a review by Terry Roberts
Elizabeth Spencer and Sally Greene. The Edward Tales. (2022)
We are so excited to start sharing book reviews forthcoming in our fall issue (due out in October)!
Most of our reviews are of books newly published by North Carolina authors who are still living with us, somewhere. However, occasionally we get to revisit friends who have passed on, when a new anthology or scholarly critique of their work is published. It’s delightful to be able to “hear” their voice again, to have another visit in their world.
Elizabeth Spencer has been gone from us since 2019. This new collection of her stories featuring one particular character, Edward, will hopefully garner new readers for one of our most esteemed authors. Roberts thinks it will: “Sally Greene has performed miracles of persistence and scholarship to honor Elizabeth Spencer – who has left us – and Edward Glenn – who has not. My advice? Read and reread The Edward Tales to savor the mystery.”
The mystery is Edward himself. Roberts writes, “Edward is both cynic and romantic, extraordinarily sensitive and yet willing to wound. He is a mystery to himself, as he admits from time to time, and often almost opaque to others. But here is the consistently interesting thing about him across all the pages and the years: he invariably angers and alienates men while drawing women to him like a magnet.”
“Greene’s thoughtful and carefully worked-out Introduction captures why Edward became so important to Spencer and why he is the key to understanding her late fiction.” Robert explains. With nearly twenty published works to delve into, new readers of Elizabeth Spencer’s will have more insight as they begin exploring her creations.
Read more about Elizabeth Spencer in our 2009 issue and check out the review before it is published this fall!
