The Friend of Women and Other Stories — Louis Auchincloss

The mysteries of character are at the heart of these six previously unpublished pieces.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. From a boyhood friendship tested by the fabrications of the McCarthy era to an iscopalian 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.