The Anniversary and Other Stories - Hardcover

Auchincloss, Louis

4.07

30 ratings by Goodreads

9780395970744: The Anniversary and Other Stories

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0395970741 ISBN 13: 9780395970744

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin, 1999

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In a new volume of short fiction, nine previously unpublished stories explore the moral dilemmas of American high society as it focuses on individuals looking back over the course of their lives, including a clergyman preparing for his twenty-fifth wedding anniversary while remembering his wife's five-year affair. 10,000 first printing.

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Review:

Louis Auchincloss had four decades to perfect his art before embarking on this, his 55th book, and all that practice shows. The prose in The Anniversary, a collection of nine short stories, harks back to an earlier age--the days of Henry James and Edith Wharton, when every word counted and every sentence was polished to a high gloss. Indeed, those years are Auchincloss's fictional stomping grounds, as well; his tales stretch from the closing decades of the 19th century through the first half of the 20th, but stop resolutely short of the tumultuous 1960s and beyond. In one, "The Virginia Redbird," James even makes a cameo appearance as a visitor to the London home of the heroine who, in typical Jamesian fashion, has entered into marriage for all the wrong reasons. The title story shows off Auchincloss's many strengths: carefully crafted prose, psychological acuity, and a complex narrative that looks easier to recount than it really is. The protagonist, a minister, reflects on the peculiar circumstances of his 25th wedding anniversary with a woman who had run off to Italy with another man and stayed away for five years before eventually returning. Auchincloss obviously delights in the intricacies of public versus private responses to this betrayal, and the eventual resolution to the story is as satisfying as it is elegant.

A professional woman who trades in lawyering for marriage; a Christian minister and headmaster who doesn't consider himself a Christian; a courtesan who has slept herself to the top of the social register--these are the characters who populate Auchincloss's world. Though their stories may seem old-fashioned, they are never outdated, dealing as they do with universal themes of conscience, forgiveness, and love. --Margaret Prior

From Kirkus Reviews:

Auchinclosss 16th collection is comprised of 9 published stories about the moneyed upper crust, whose complex mores have for over 40 years been memorably delineated in the prolific authors impressive oeuvre (more than 50 books and counting). An autumnal mood suffuses these supremely literate tales of social-climbing and conflict, most of which are recollected in a kind of wry tranquility, and all of which display learned literary and cultural allusions and patiently constructed Jamesian periodic sentences. James is a clear influence on several stories that contrast Americans and Europeans (he even appears in The Virginia Redbird as a frequent visitor to the London home of the impecunious beauty who is, as she realizes, her snobbish husbands prize possession). By comparison, other stories feel underimagined (DeCicco v. Schweizer, for example, a perhaps semiautobiographical meditation on its narrators twin passions for the law and literature) or overfamiliar (the title storys bland exploration of a marriage endangered, then redeemed by adultery and its aftershocks; and the smug The Last of the Great Courtesans, both reading like warmed-over John OHara). But there are also several gems. In a densely packed 20 pages, The Devil and Guy Lansing records the spiritual odyssey and rueful self-discovery of a prep school headmaster-clergyman who became a priest without being a Christian, and The Veterans reaches back to the Civil War to examine the hearts and minds of two Americans in Paris, exempted from military service but not from the pressures of their respective consciences. And Man of the Renaissance superbly portrays the emotions of a sophisticate raised among Italys cultural wonders who understands too late that his accomplished young son was, unlike himself, much more than an appreciat[or] of beautiful things. Its a story the author of The Beast in the Jungle would have admired. Vintage Auchincloss: suave, skillfully crafted, amusing, dependably entertaining stories from a master who, now in his ninth decade, remains one of the essential American writers. -- Copyright �1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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