This short story by Louis Auchincloss rather surprised me; I thought I was reading something from the era of Dorothy Parker.
It is of that style, of that era, yet written I believe fairly recently. The storyworld is one that most readers will not relate to well, yet may, as with much literature and narrative, provide insight into a world different enough to be enticing to the curious reader. After all, we are not familiar with and yet grow comfortable to the strange worlds of sci fi genre.
What Auchincloss investigates with this story is the depth of self-centeredness and resentment of a daughter towards her father in particular. It is always intriguing to see how a writer handles a not particularly likeable first person narrator. Not that she, Kate, is particularly dislikeable, it is merely that as she relates episodes in her own perspective, we suspect that her view is colored by her own flaws. Even as she tells us her problems in her relationships, we are not completely sympathetic as we see her manipulations. This did indeed remind me somewhat of certain of Dorothy Parker’s characters and is what makes them so appealing.
Not by any means a story of deep import, it still is an interesting read and a very skillfully drawn narrative.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology