Early short stories showing promise of things to come, pervasive themes of class disparity, yearning and women’s role in society. Captures settings of rural/small town South, NYC and some Midwest very well. Characters know they want something but cannot say exactly what— yearning to be somewhere else. Eerie in sections where one feels the living memory of the Civil War (60 years ago or so): if you were in your 20s now, it would be absorbed memories of the 1960s from your older relatives.

Slight overuse of adjectives (a painterly aspect?) and the dialog style may be distancing for readers; use of racist terminology and perspective may be off-putting but it is in keeping with the time period, as is its portrayal of women. Fitzgerald’s female characters do mostly have some sense that they are dealing with a stacked deck. While not many memorable lines, and later work is more deftly written, multiple images and characters in this collection stay with the reader. “Bernice Bobs Her Hair,” The Ice Palace,” and “May Day” strongest; the only weak link is “The Offshore Pirate.” ( )

Fitzgerald is a writer who epitomized an era. His themes of social class division in the 1910s and 20s, and burning youthfulness after war feel redundant in this story collection. Each story is structured almost always in the same way. He begins with a summary of plot, place or character; always a summary, even if it’s within dialogue. The one exception in this book is the story written later in his life, “Benediction,” which opens with the scene of the Baltimore train station and a woman in the crowd waiting “for interminable, sticky seconds” for the telegraph operator. His stories rely on surprise action, or extreme drama, or a climactic event that leands toward magical reality in order for the plot to unfold. It seems as if his stories are written with a formula in mind, like a mannequin around which all his stories must fit. Some simply do not. ( )