Consider Her Ways

Jul 2, 2025 7:32 AM

Author:John Wyndham

Consider Her Ways

The six stories in Consider Her Ways: And Others, the second collecton of John Wyndham's short tales, continue his exploration of the science fiction staple - what if?

In the title story we are introduced to a world where all the men have been killed by a virus and women continue to survive in a strict caste system - bottom of the heap are the mothers. In others we meet the man who accidentally summons a devil and then has to find a way of getting rid of him without losing his immortal soul, as well as the woman who, thanks to an experiment in time, discovers why her lover abandoned her.

'Wyndham writes strongly and has a gift for bizarre plots' Guardian

'One of the few authors whose compulsive readability is a compliment to the intelligence' Spectator

John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Benyon Harris was born in 1903, the son of a barrister. He tried a number of careers including farming, law, commercial art and advertising, and started writing short stories, intended for sale, in 1925. From 1930 to 1939 he wrote short stories of various kinds under different names, almost exclusively for American publications, while also writing detective novels. During the war he was in the Civil Service and then the Army. In 1946 he went back to writing stories for publication in the USA and decided to try a modified form of science fiction, a form he called 'logical fantasy'. As John Wyndham he wrote The Day of the Triffids, The Kraken Wakes, The Chrysalids, The Midwich Cuckoos (filmed as Village of the Damned), The Seeds of Time, Trouble with Lichen, The Outward Urge, Consider Her Ways and Others, Web and Chocky. John Wyndham died in March 1969.

Reviews

She has a touch of genius

—— Mail on Sunday

Whatever it is that makes some writing come alive in every phrase and sentence, Alice Munro has it... I wouldn't willingly miss one of her stories

—— Sunday Times

Munro has been compared with Proust, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and remains - though dazzling - quite unperturbed and unaffected, her writing smooth and supple

—— Financial Times

A work of great brilliance and depth... Munro's power of analysis, of sensation, and thoughts, is almost Proustian in its sureness

—— New Statesman

Only a few writers continue to create those full-bodied miniature universes of the old school. Some of her short stories are so ample and fulfilling that they feel like novels. They present whole landscapes and cultures, whole families of characters

—— Anne Tyler

In range and depth her short stories are almost novels...complete, complex, and brilliantly structured... One of the finest living short-story writers

—— Daily Telegraph

One of the foremost contemporary practitioners of the short story

—— Michiko Kakutani , New York Times

Like her similarly gifted contemporaries Peter Taylor, William Trevor, Edna O'Brien...Alice Munro writes stories that have the density - moral, emotional, sometimes historical - of other writers' novels

—— Joyce Carol Oates , New York Times Book Review

A...writer of great sensitivity and delicacy. Her new collection of stories show no falling off in her gift for putting the ordinary into a sharp, clear persepective, seem very near and also very far away

—— Guardian

She draws her readers irresistably into the undergrowth of other people's private lives

—— Cosmopolitan

Paul Theroux combines the traveller's hawk eye with the novelist's keen insight. . .[he has] an uncanny ability to rivet the reader.

—— New Statesman

A masterpiece of wit and elegance.

—— Elspeth Barker , Literary Review

The author charts the various stages of life with engaging curiosity and earthy compassion... The publishers, Jonathan Cape, have done a fine job with this handsome and substantial collection.

—— Keith Hopper , Times Literary Supplement

All the customary satisfactions of Burnside's writing – anomie, menace, flashes of violence and cruelty, hallucination and snow – but multiplied.

—— Sunday Telegraph

Even Burnside’s most routine stories have beauty and intelligence. He is never less than something like brilliant.

—— Daily Telegraph

A tremendous collection from a writer working at the full tilt of his gifts.

—— Kevin Barry , Ormskirk Advertiser

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