The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford

Jean Stafford is a pretty much-forgotten author from the 50’s.  I read her novel The Mountain Lion and was highly impressed by it.   So I read her collected short stories which won the Pulitzer Prize.  The best story The Echo and the Nemesis is about a fat rich girl and her skinny friend.  The fat girl is haunted by her dead beautiful twin sister.  She tries to lose weight by going to places where the food is no good.  A Country Love story is about an ill husband and how the wife drifts into a dream world while all of it is going on.  Also, I liked The Healthiest Girl in Town about a girl who becomes friends with two girls with tuberculosis and lies about her father’s health just to fit in.  Jean Stafford does excellently on stories about adolescence.  Another story which deals with children is Bad Characters which is about a girl who becomes friends with a thief.  A Reading Problem about a girl who is finding it hard to find a place to read and finds it at the jail.  Stafford is an author that deserves another look.