title: Key West Tales: Stories
author:  John Hersey 
description: This posthumous collection of stories, set in a place Hersey loved, may be the last work we shall see from this greatly gifted writer. It is a curious collection, blending fully realized fictional stories with real-life happenings in the Key's long history that are little more than anecdotes, richly embellished by the author. These are mildly enjoyable but quite forgettable. By far the most substantial story, "Get Up, Sweet Slug-a-bed" (the quotation is from Thomas Herrick), is a startling departure for Hersey, being about an aging and once rather ruthless gay professor dying of AIDS, and the bickering over his care and with his awful family. It is full of tender observation, often funny, and ultimately poignant--and nothing else in the collection is on the same level. A much more conventional story (and a more predictable one from the author), "Piped Over the Side," is about a naval officer's ambivalent feelings toward his retirement ceremony. "The Two Lives of Consuela Castanon" is a wry tale about a deliciously fat young woman and a lover who, unhappily for her, likes her just the way she is. "Fantasy Fest" has a woman anxiously seeking her natural son, adopted as a baby, in the whirl of a Halloween parade. Everything here is smooth and professional, if occasionally rather trite ("Page Two" and "A Game of Anagrams"). Only the AIDS story shows Hersey really moving on into new and tougher-minded terrain. <br />Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
zlib_text: ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  
  John Hersey was born in Tientsin, China, in 1914 and lived there until 1925,
  when his family returned to the United States. He studied at Yale and
  Cambridge, served for a time as Sinclair Lewis’s secretary, and then worked
  several years as a journalist. Beginning in 1947 he devoted his time mainly to
  writing fiction. He won the Pulitzer Prize, taught for two decades at Yale,
  and was president of the Authors League of America and Chancellor of the
  American Academy of Arts and Letters. John Hersey died in 1993.
  
  > > BOOKS BY JOHN HERSEY
  
  > > BLUES
  
  > > THE CALL
  
  > > THE WALNUT DOOR
  
  > > THE PRESIDENT
  
  > > MY PETITION FOR MORE SPACE
  
  > > THE WRITER’S CRAFT
  
  > > THE CONSPIRACY
  
  > > LETTER TO THE ALUMNI
  
  > > THE ALGIERS MOTEL INCIDENT
  
  > > UNDER THE EYE OF THE STORM
  
  > > TOO FAR TO WALK
  
  > > WHITE LOTUS
  
  > > HERE TO STAY
  
  > > THE CHILD BUYER
  
  > > THE WAR LOVER
  
  > > A SINGLE PEBBLE
  
  > > THE MARMOT DRIVE
  
  > > THE WALL
  
  > > A BELL FOR ADANO
  
  > > INTO THE VALLEY
  
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