To See You Again

by Alice Adams

Throughout her acclaimed career, Alice Adams demonstrated a remarkable finesse in both the novel and the short story.

Her second collection reveals her ability to feelingly project whole lives in the space of a few pages. Here are people trying to pull free of the constraints of family bonds, people bewitched by capricious love, people conquering old panics, or changing in profound ways.

Included are “Snow,” “Legends,” “Lost Luggage,” “An Unscheduled Stop, “At First Sight.”

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Womens

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Alice Adams was an American novelist, short story writer, academic and university professor.

She was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia and attended Radcliffe College, graduating in 1946. She married, and had a child, but her marriage broke up, and she spent several years as a single mother, working as a secretary. Her psychiatrist told her to give up writing and get remarried; instead she published her first novel, Careless Love (1966), and a few years later she published her first short story in The New Yorker. She wrote many novels but she's best known for her short stories, in collections such as After You've Gone (1989) and The Last Lovely City (1999).

She won numerous awards including the O. Henry Award, and Best American Short Stories Award.

Reviews

[Glenn Sumi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lately I've discovered that short stories make appropriate reading during a pandemic.

I've been finding it difficult to stay focused for the 350 or 400 pages of a typical novel, but a 20 or 25 page story? That's doable. And the late Alice Adams was a marvellously adept short story writer.

Every few days I'd read one or two stories, let them sink in and then go on to something else. There are 19 in total in this 1982 collection, and most are very good, even if none of them is mind-blowing.

After a while, I found the stories blending into each other; there's a sameness to some of the protagonists (mostly upper-middle class white women in late middle age), settings (San Francisco and/or the Carolinas) and situations. But Adams's style is so graceful and her eye so observant that I didn't care.

Her first sentences are particularly good. Here are some examples:

"Yvonne Soulas, the art historian, is much more beautiful in her late sixties than she was when she was young, and this is strange, because she has had much trouble in her life, including pancreatic cancer, through which she lived when no one expected her to."

"Partly because she was so very plain, large and cumbersome, like her name, at first I liked Candida Heffelfinger better than any interviewer who had come around for years."

"Feeling sixteen, although in fact just a few months short of sixty, Felicia Lord checks into the San Francisco hotel at which her lover is to meet her the following day."

After reading each of these first sentences, I wanted to keep reading, and Adams didn't disappoint. She'd set up an intriguing situation with just enough details about the setting, backtrack to fill in some character history, and then proceed to a climax and resolution. All achieved with a deceptively light touch.

Sometimes, Adams will pull off a Virginia Woolf-like effect, where an omniscient narrator hovers over the story, telling us what various characters are thinking and what becomes of them. Other times, she'll give us a clear POV, usually from someone in a moment of flux.

In one story, a widow has come back from a Mexican vacation but is missing her luggage, which includes the notes she initially recorded about her grief. In another, a famous sculptor, about to be interviewed for an article, recalls her notorious and tumultuous affair with a noted musician, including details no one knows. In another, a woman discovers a lot about a recent lover when they take a sudden trip to Las Vegas. In one of my favourite stories, a woman reassesses her relationship with her older lover – they're about to be married – when she sees their differing reactions to his broken-into house.

Adams is very good at capturing those little moments that can make a person see their life in a whole new way, with clarity and a sense of purpose. Like all good fiction, it asks us to look at our own lives and loves with similar clarity. To see ourselves again, as it were.

[Frank · Rating 5 out of 5]

The perfect collection of short stories. Simple, elegant, smart, lyrical, still relevant, beautiful. No-one can write a short story like Alice Adams.

[Donna Good · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I am not always a short story fan, this brilliant book of short stories opened my eyes to the beauty of simplicity possible in just a very few pages.

[Connie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I forgot how much I love Alice Adams. I can fall into her stories and then suddenly look up, and feel emotionally transformed. Highly recommend.

[Tristy · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the worst collection of short stories I've read of Alice Adams so far. All her characters are so brutally sad and angry and passive. Also, now that I have read a few of her publications, I'm starting to notice repeating patterns: Boston, the South, women who hate other women, abusive husbands. I'm starting to tire of these same characters over and over.

[Colleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite authors. Pure escapism.

[Phyl · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of 19 short stories. Half of them boring and the other half good, some very good.