Ernest Miller Hemingway was the outstanding author, journalist, novelist, and short-story writer. His economical and understated style - which he termed the iceberg theory - had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction. Hemingway’s short story A Canary for One speaks leagues simultaneously about the author’s skill in observing irony in real life and colourfully painting it out in fiction, as well as expressing Hemingway’s observations about his fellow Americans. Three unnamed Americans - a middle-aged woman and a younger couple - travel together on an overnight train to Paris. The older woman fears that the speed of modern transit will produce wrecks. Although she does not mention her absent husband, who apparently is home with their daughter, she continually asserts that only American men make “good husbands” for American women. Her main concern is for the marriage of her own daughter. Two years earlier, while the family was vacationing at Vevey, Switzerland, her daughter had fallen madly in love with a Swiss gentleman of good family and prospects… There is a sense that the American lady wishes to control her daughter’s life or at least control who she falls in love with. This is important as in many ways the American Lady’s daughter may feel trapped by her mother. Just as the canary is trapped in the cage. Try to listen online to English audiobook "A Canary for One” for free and enjoy the story about control, identity, discontent and separation.
