Astray

By: Emma Donoghue

Narrated by: Suzanne Toren, Dion Graham, Robert Petkoff, James Langton, Khristine Hvam

The fascinating characters that roam in Emma Donoghue's stories have all gone astray: they are emigrants, runaways, drifters, lovers old and new. They are gold miners and counterfeiters, attorneys and slaves. They cross other borders too: those of race, law, sex, and sanity. They travel for love or money, incognito or under duress.

With rich historical detail, the celebrated author of Room takes us from puritan Massachusetts to revolutionary New Jersey, antebellum Louisiana to the Toronto highway, lighting up four centuries of wanderings that have profound echoes in the present. Astray offers us a surprising and moving history for restless times.

©2012 Emma Donoghue (P)2012 Hachette Audio

Critic reviews

"Donoghue's affinity for yesteryear's untold tales is charming, and her talent for dialect is hard to overstate, which is why it's the first-person stories in ASTRAY that shine brightest....Each and every one of Donoghue's characters leaves an impression."—Time

"Donoghue's ASTRAY masters the long reach of short tales.... What is most impressive about these stories is her ability to plumb historical footnotes for timeless emotional resonance and reanimate 'real people who left traces in the historical record.'"—Heller McAlpin, The Washington Post

"From England, Canada and the United States, Donoghue has created a restless world of travelers, finders and seekers, as well as a book that is an interactive narrative hybrid, one that gets us lost in other lives, that probes our history, that reveals the artist behind the word and that ultimately shows us something fresh, unsettling and enduring about ourselves."—Caroline Leavitt, The San Francisco Chronicle

Great use of historical fiction

This is a fine and unique collection of historical fiction pieces, with a postscript behind each story explaining the origin of the characters and the situation.

Excellent Collection of Short Stories

This was an interesting collection of short stories; the author took real life historical events (or snippets of something that she happened to read) and developed fictional stories to bring the characters and situations to life. I enjoyed the stories and the glimpse into the lives of those that lived in the 1800s and early 1900s. This collection was unique, because after each story, there was a blurb as to what inspired the story and in some cases, what happened to the characters. I thought this was very well done, and the various narrators brought the characters to life.

A Fine Collection

'Astray' is a fascinating and diverse collection of fourteen short stories/vignettes loosely based on snippets from letters, newspaper articles, footnotes, and other historical documents. Donoghue has taken these small pieces and used both her research and her imagination to flesh them out into complete characters and stories. They range across centuries (from the 17th to the 20th) and are set in various places (London, Texas, Ontario, Massachusetts, and more), and the main characters come from all walks of life: a young Hessian soldier in the Revolutionary war, an elephant keeper, two Gold Rush prospectors, a pair of female sculptors, a runaway slave, a prostitute, a young widowed mother unable to support her child--to name but a few. What they all have in common is that each has in some way taken a life journey that has gone astray, whether due to accident, ambition, corruption, madness, or the pinch of necessity. Each story is followed by a brief explanation of the document that inspired it and what Donoghue learned about the real-life characters' fates. I found two of the stories that were based on letters particularly moving. "Counting Down the Days" tells of a young Irish man who emigrated to Canada, leaving his wife and baby behind; now, at last, she is sailing to join him. In "The Gift," an impoverished young widow reluctantly gives her baby daughter into the care of a social services agency; they place her in a foster home and eventually facilitate her adoption. The story consists of letters written by the birth mother, who attempts to retrieve her lost daughter, and by her adoptive father.

'Astray' bears some similarities to Donoghue's earlier collection, 'The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits,' but her skills as a writer have been finely tuned since 2002. While not all of the stories are equally strong, there is something admirable in each, and something here for everyone. Highly recommended.

A gem!

I was thoroughly surprised at hoe amazing this book is. A great read. Try it.

CRAZY AS POPCORN ON A STOVE

TO THE IMPURE, ALL THINGS ARE IMPURE
Like most everyone else I listened to Room and loved it. Like I usually do I searched for another recording of Donoguhe, after listening to the CD. All books audible has by her have low ratings and not so good reviews. I have a promise to myself to not waste a credit on books with low ratings, so I ignored her for a time. Finally I took a chance on this collection of short stories. It is less then seven hours long and they are short stories, so my mental investment was not that long.

THE BRITISH ARE MORE SQUEAMISH ABOUT BEATING THEIR ANIMALS, THEN THEIR CHILDREN.
The very first story was Man and Boy. It was a story about an actual man in history and an actual elephant. I am an animal lover and this was a sort of love story between a man and an elephant. I also love historical fiction. This was a great story. All of these stories are based on something in history. Sometimes it was one line in a newspaper in which Emma draws a whole story. Sometimes it is a more in depth knowledge of the historical facts and sometimes it is totally made up, using the facts of the time, such as Snow Blind, which is about the Gold Rush. After each and every story you are told how she came up with the story, so you will know how much is fact and how much is fiction. At the end of the book is an Afterword, which explains the reason for the whole book and it's name Astray.

Emma also brings out some interesting events, which will surprise you. There are stories about gays, cross dressers, tough women, and one involving rape. In one story an adult woman does not find out till after her dad dies, that he was a woman. This is based on historical records. One story is about a man's struggle with his religion, sin and his own sexual desires. There are 14 stories and an afterword. I would give an A grade to four of the stories. I listen and read lots of short story collections and to have that many stories that I would rank that high is very rare. Several stories are average, but none of the stories are awful to listen to. I have found that I like ED's style of writing and regardless of the low ratings, I will take a chance on another of her books.

The narrators are excellent.

A good collection of short stories

I will just list the strengths of this collection of stories rather than an actual review

1) Emma Donoghue is a writter that manages to capture interesting literary themes in very accesible readable/page turning stories

2) The time and place of the stories are clearly set at the beginging so the reader is not spending time figuring what period a story is taking place

3) All/most of these stories are based on actual events. Donoghue is a real good researcher and historical writer

4) All the stories have a general theme of people leaving or finding a physical/mental place which ties the stories together well.

A definitie reccomendation