The Friend of Women and Other Stories

The Los Angeles Times has lauded Louis Auchincloss as "a novelist committed to examining the complicated layers of character, psychology, and society." In The Friend of Women, that dedication shines on every page in the singular, epigrammatic style of an American master. The mysteries of character are at the heart of these six previously unpublished pieces. In the title story, a teacher at a private girls' school ruminates on a long career, wondering if he was right to encourage his students to find a life less constrained than the conventional one prescribed to them or if he cruelly raised unrealistic expectations. In "The Country Cousin" -- a delightful one-act play -- a wealthy woman's dependent niece unwittingly serves as the vehicle that reveals her rich relatives' self-involvement. Ranging from a boyhood friendship tested by the fabrications of the McCarthy era to an Episcopal priest tormented by an autocratic headmaster, Auchincloss's fiction illuminates the complications that ensue when our perceptions of other people's character -- as well as our own -- are upended.