Storeys from the Old Hotel
On Saturday night, I finished reading Gene Wolfe‘s Storeys from the Old Hotel. As with every short story collection, some stories are better than others. With Wolfe, my initial judgments are tentative (unless I really like the story) since there’s often more going on in his stories than appears at first glance.
They say that you’re learning to read Wolfe when his endings feel like endings. Well, some of the stories in this collection clicked for me completely and the endings did feel like endings. Others I’ll need to reread and puzzle over some more.
My favourite stories? I liked several of them, but the two I liked best were “The Death of the Island Doctor” and “Westwind.” I read “Westwind” as something of an allegory, with intentionally Christian themes, though saying that really doesn’t capture the magic of the story very well.