Thirteen Stories: The Definitive American Short Story Anthology by Eudora Welty

by Eudora Welty

Thirteen outstanding short stories by Welty, written between 1937 and 1951. “Miss Welty has written some of the finest short stories of modern times” (Orville Prescott, New York Times). Selected and with an Introduction by Ruth M. Vande Kieft.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Classics, Southern, American, Literary Fiction, Anthologies

252 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

Eudora Alice Welty was an award-winning American author who wrote short stories and novels about the American South. Her book The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 and she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous awards. She was the first living author to have her works published by the Library of America.

Welty was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and lived a significant portion of her life in the city's Belhaven neighborhood, where her home has been preserved. She was educated at the Mississippi State College for Women (now called Mississippi University for Women), the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Columbia Business School. While at Columbia University, where she was the captain of the women's polo team, Welty was a regular at Romany Marie's café in 1930.

During the 1930s, Welty worked as a photographer for the Works Progress Administration, a job that sent her all over the state of Mississippi photographing people from all economic and social classes. Collections of her photographs are One Time, One Place and Photographs.

Welty's true love was literature, not photography, and she soon devoted her energy to writing fiction. Her first short story, "Death of a Traveling Salesman," appeared in 1936. Her work attracted the attention of Katherine Anne Porter, who became a mentor to her and wrote the foreword to Welty's first collection of short stories, A Curtain of Green, in 1941. The book immediately established Welty as one of American literature's leading lights and featured the legendary and oft-anthologized stories "Why I Live at the P.O.," "Petrified Man," and "A Worn Path." Her novel, The Optimist's Daughter, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973.

In 1992, Welty was awarded the Rea Award for the Short Story for her lifetime contributions to the American short story, and was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, founded in 1987. In her later life, she lived near Belhaven College in Jackson, Mississippi, where, despite her fame, she was still a common sight among the people of her hometown.
Eudora Welty died of pneumonia in Jackson, Mississippi, at the age of 92, and is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Jackson.

Excerpted and adopted from Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

RELOAD - yes please!

The Great? Eudora Welty - I'm not so sure. Let's begin with the worst - "The Bride of the Innisfallen", I had to grind my way to the end. Normally I don't grind, but as I had decided to write a review I thought it only fair that I read each and every word of every story in the selection. The dialogue between the train passengers was So Boring. The other two note worthies that fall into the class of 'grind' were "Powerhouse" - I'm guessing a reference to Fats Waller and his band, "A Still Moment", the still moment was so still I had brain freeze, maybe it's too hot here or something.

Anyway let us move rapidly to the high-lights - definitely "Why I live at the P.O." - it's funny, it's light, it's wicked and totally real, coming up next in the power house section is "Keela, the Outcast Indian Maid" - this seems to have been removed from some editions -I can't think why because it neatly encapsulates how people Just Don't Think - they find themselves involved in cruel or racist or ignorant behaviour and say "whaat - ah jus dun wha I wus told,". It's funny and it's very, very good.

Next - beloved by many "A Worn Path", of delight to me is the description of plant life along the way - the old Natchez Trace, I believe. My other fav is "The Hitch-Hikers", it's told with this slight disconnection in the narrative - as if the narrator - Harris is in a kind of dream. There's his strange longing to hear the guitar player's music and then his loss, but at the same time, this quirky twist where we know that Harris knows it's the guitar player tried to steal his car. And then the odd disclosure at the end by the girl, when we find that Harris was a piano player, it brings in all the dissonant strands of the story - brilliant, more than brilliant I think, here lies her genius.

Now -the in betweens: "Old Mr Marblehall", predictable, but the angle of narrative is strange, lifts the story; "Petrified Man" - hairdresser gossip, found myself getting bored; "The Wide Net", great landscape description and very reminiscent of Steinbeck's Cannery Row; "Lilly Daw", "Livvie", middling.

And finally the real curiosity of the collection - "Moon Lake", straight away I'm thinking of Katherine Mansfield and her raw, perfection of a child's world. I loved the walk down to the Lake:

"Closer to the ear than lips could begin words came the swamp sounds - closer to the ear and nearer to the dreaming mind."

And there it is - you enter a sort of dream zone. Her descriptions of plant and nature are breathless - "The night sky was pale as a green grape, transparent like grape flesh over each tree." - and then Death comes creeping, when the girls are safe at the camp -

"The pondering night stood rude at the tent door, the opening fold would let it stoop in - it, him - he had risen up inside. Long-armed, or long-winged, he stood in the center there where the pole went up."

It's mesmerizing.

So, there you have it - She's not an easy read - beloved of academics, - they always like the hard stuff, but then the gems and jewels are kind of worth the climb.

[Lori Keeton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of stories by southern great Eudora Welty. Her stories cover a plethora of people and situations, yet they are written with compassion, wit, sadness and sometimes humor. There is often a gothic tone that a reader (unless you are familiar with Welty) does not expect. She does it so well that you accept it and believe it. Her voice is distinctive and the people she introduces readers to are so often eccentric and larger-than-life and at the same time ordinary. Welty’s sense of place is perfect!

To highlight a few of the stories:

“The Wide Net” is a haunting story of a pregnant wife that will keep you guessing.

“Petrified Man” reveals the ruthlessness of small-town gossip right from the beauty shop.

“Why I Live and the P.O.” is a humorous look at how dysfunctional families can “wrong” its members over petty issues. But this story is one-sided!

“A Worn Path” demonstrates the endurance and steadfastness of loving and caring for another despite formidable obstacles.

“Moon Lake” describes an idyllic summer camp scenario with a Welty gothic turn that raises the tension level as you read it.

[Jacob · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is a thoughtful, intentional preciseness to Eudora Welty's prose--observational, coy--that describes her characters and settings in a way that can be inspired. Yet it feels surface-level. There is no intimacy here. Not much between the characters themselves, and definitely not between character and reader. Some authors can overcome a lack of intimacy (esp. that with the reader) through compelling scenarios or by presenting dramatic revelations for the characters. Some authors can overcome that lack of intimacy through presenting a textured world that is easy for the reader to dive into and get lost in.

I never got that feeling with the stories here.

Each character feels like its own cog, turning at its own speed: unwavering, ongoing. And when these characters meet, these cogs clash, at odds with each other. These cogs pushing against undefined desires, needs, situations. Perhaps the best example of this is in the story "A Still Moment," which features three men who encounter each other in the middle of nowhere. One is intent on bringing salvation, one is a killer, and one is an artist. These three cogs move into the story, rattle against each other without finding give, and separate. At no point did those three characters feel like they belonged together, had their lives changed because they were together, or, or, or anything. I guess in a case of getting what is promised, we did have a still moment where nature takes over the text and a devotional hush falls. But without something from the characters, it feels unimportant.

This dynamic isn't always terrible. The last story in the collection, "The Bride of the Innisfallen," showcases the immovability of the cogs as a strength: A collection of people seated together in the same train car. The story is chaos; a jumble of dialogue and movement and reaction. It feels like you might expect a random assortment of people journeying together to feel like. No one in a train car has reason to be changed, to slow down (or speed up) their cog to connect with another person. It's just a bunch of people existing together, tolerating each other, making the best of a situation no one really likes.

Nearly every story in the collection feels too long. The good gets overcrowded by the tedium of page after page of the same. The aforementioned "The Bride of the Innisfallen" falls prey to this malady. It runs about ten pages too long--the novelty of the scenario wears off and it just ends up feeling aimless. From a plot standpoint, one of the best stories is "Moon Lake," which has a definite setting up of tensions and final relieving of tensions. But the story is the longest in the entire book (itself split into segments) and too much time is spent on factors unrelated to the core narrative.

"Why I Live at the P.O." is the standout story. That one sparkling moment when a narrative is clear, complete, and is told in a succinct manner. A young woman, after a petty family squabble, goes to live at the post office where she works. The immovable cogs are a bit more mutable as we see the family members flex against each other, trying to find an equilibrium. But nothing can be so simple and the cogs can't find the proper grip and everything spirals apart. It's a rising success that makes the failure of the rest of the stories all the more bitter.

I also want to mention "Powerhouse." While it falls trap to the aimless, formless narrative that plagues most of this collection, it's the spot where Welty's prose goes from "great" to "dynamite." Much of the story is a band leader playing music with his band. You can feel the rumble and stomp of the 12-bar blues, the flying sweat, and the fervent, prayer-like affect of his voice. It's where Welty's prose ceases to to be seen and, instead, transports us into that dingy bar. I can't imagine someone doing a better job of communicating such an audible/visual scene in words. In other stories, Welty's prose is great on an individual sentence level--it's the narrative whole where it falls short. With "Powerhouse," it becomes a furious, driving force that transcends the need for characters that connect or shorter length--it becomes a moment in itself.

I don't usually recommend books that I rate this low, but the few high points make Thirteen Stories a worthwhile endeavor. Especially since most people seem to connect with Welty in a way that I did not.

[Kaion · Rating 3 out of 5]

On first reading "Why I Live at the P.O.," I was impressed by Welty's ability at finding humor in her portrait of a deeply disfunctional Southern family who were haunted by an imagined gentile past. As I read through Thirteen Stories, however, I started to wonder if that was all she was capable of: grotesques, and cariactures of a certain kind of stagnant Southerness.

It helps that she's really good at it. Welty's a critic's sort of writer, measured and detail-oriented; the observative detail in her stories offset their narrative inertia. "The Quiet Greatness of Eudora Welty," the title of recent profile of Welty, epitomizes the sort of thing that critics always say about these sorts of writers [Danny Heitman].

If her characters share a certain grotesque quality with those of say, Flannery O'Connor -- or Faulker or Anderson -- Welty has the advantage of seeing them as people. Really weird people, but maybe that's just a Southern thing. By simply refraining from moralism or gradiosity, Welty lends her characters a special kind of dignity. They may not be good, enlightened, or self-aware -- in fact, they are often poorly-behaved, racist, and hypocritical ... but at least they are themselves. Rating: 3 stars

Highlights:
- "The Wide Net" - haunting, must-read of the collection
- "Lily Daw and the Three Ladies"
- "Livvie"

[Owen Weitzel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Welty writes so beautifully, I loved her prose and her stories. I am going to have to read more of them!

There were some stories of which I did not enjoy the premises of completely but their technicality made up for it.

This collection does not house the only Welty story I had read previously, which is my personal favorite Welty Story, so it was nice to read different pieces.

Welty is a true modernist, but also quite different from the rest, she definitely is one of the most visual story tellers I have read.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of the story collections for Welty, this is the one to read. The introduction written by the editor is excellent and should be read before starting the stories. Most of the stories are dispassionate; Welty does not get in the way and is not preaching or moralizing or teaching. I would rather read Welty than O’Connor for this reason. My favorite story is Powerhouse, where the writing imitates jazz improvisation and is beautifully done.

[Louis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was my first encounter with the writings of Eudora Welty, whose work I've long wanted to read. Based on this initial volume, she may be a bit of an acquired taste. The stories in this volume are not of uniform quality; some are fairly short and others much too long for short stories. At times her work feels like a parody of Southern literature as they are filled with people who seem to do some bizarre and even grotesque things. That said, the writing is of a high quality and most of the work is not boring. I did enjoy "Why I Live at the P.O.," a Welty story long held up as one of her best. While I plan to read more of her work, I'll approach a bit more warily the next time.

[Faith Neece · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel like maybe I’m not super qualified to judge Eudora Welty and give this book 3 stars. I do have to admit my bias— I just don’t love short stories. It’s hard for me to invest in characters if I’m only with them for a few pages. I did enjoy a couple of the stories in this book, but some of them bored me to tears, despite being well-written. Maybe read this book if you love southern literature and short stories? Otherwise you may feel as I do: not hating the book, but not loving it either.

[Antonio Dittmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

The thirteen stories, hand-picked by editor Ruth M. Vande Kieft, are an excellent introduction Welty’s work and will whet your apetite for her full-length novels. Several of the stories seem at first reading to be plotless and pointless, more tableaux-de-vie, (“slices of life”), than story – a scene without a play.

Yet despite that initial misconception, you will find in the days after that the hidden depth of each of these stories blooms in your mind the way fresh, cold, early spring rosebuds do – layer-by-layer. “The Wide Net” is a perfect example and the first you will encounter here, but it has plenty of company. “Old Mr. Marblehead,” and “The Hitchhikers” stand out as stories of deceptive simplicity. Indeed, that is Welty’s point: “the pervading and changing mystery of human relationships.” (Editor’s introduction)

Two of the stories in this collection stand out above the rest: “A Still Moment”,, and “The Bride of the Innisfallen”. The length limit of these reviews precludes discussing both. My remarks on the former are below. Happy reading!


A Still Moment

In “A Still Moment”, Welty establishes her simple cosmology: an Angel, a Devil, and existing between them, a flawed and vulnerable human being. But Welty’s simplicity is always a ruse, a deception too facile to take at face value. This is her way of preparing us to accompany her behind the façade of what seems obvious at first, but is actually complex and layered. Welty is a keen observer of human interaction, unique and, in my view, peerless, even as part of the richly introspective company of the other Southern renaissance writers of her day – Capote, McCullers, Williams, Lee, and Flagg, among others. Yet she is at her best when she takes us from what is quotidian in human interaction to what is transcendent. In this story, Welty shows us that we human beings can outdo the Angel in loving and outdo the Devil in our capacity for wickedness.

The three characters we meet in this story are each real, historical figures who attained a certain notoriety. The Devil is John Murrell (1806-1844) often spelled ‘Murell’ or ‘Murrel’. He apparently used all of these variants himself at one time or another. Murrell was a nefarious horse thief, a crime which earned him the gruesome punishment of having “H.T.” branded on his right hand. He also stole slaves, often posing as an abolitionist and promising the slave his freedom, only to turn around and profit by re-selling the slave to a new master. Much lore clouds the biographical facts of this nefarious bandit. Charges of cold-blooded murder have never been substantiated, and as so often happens with notorious criminals, legends of criminal activity collected around him, his reputation growing like a rolling snowball.

Lorenz Dow, the Angel, was an itinerant preacher whose bombastic, theatrical, soap box gospel preaching made him an object of demand for both evangelism and general curiosity. Dow devoted his entire life to two aims: preaching, ostensibly for the salvation of souls; and peripateticism, largely for his own sake rather than for the glorification of “the Kingdom of God”. He cared little if at all about the effect this had on his wife. She lived most of their married life alone and childless, and she pre-deceased him. Dow died in the care of one of his rare friends, George Haller.

The human being occupying the twilight zone between these two opposites is the artist John James Audubon, the famous naturalist painter most revered for his supra-real paintings of birds, and for whom the bird preservation organization, The Audubon Society, is named. And here, at the risk of introducing a bit of a spoiler I prefer to let Welty speak for herself: As the three men join up, tacking through the famous (and infamous) Natchez Trace, they come upon a heron that has left its migrating formation to drink from the river.

“The gaze that looks outward must be trained without rest, to be indomitable. It must see as slowly as Murrell’s ant in the grass, as exhaustively as Lorenzo’s angel of God, and then, Audubon dreamed, with his mind going to his pointed brush, it must see like this, and he tightened his hand on the trigger of the gun and pulled it, and his eyes went closed. In memory the heron was all its solitude, its total beauty. All its whiteness could be seen from all sides at once, its pure feathers were as if counted and known, and their array one upon the other would never be lost. But it was not from that memory that he could paint.” [p.96]

“The Heron” becomes one of Audubon’s most celebrated works. He cossets the corpse under his arm and wanders off, leaving both the Angel and the Devil completely awestruck. Yet up to this point, Welty depicts Audubon as gentle, monastically taciturn and confined. His act of undeniable, cold cruelty hits us like lightning! At this point, I put the book down; I was near tears. For as does Audubon, so do we all, in ways less stark but no less self-serving. Audubon is at once our goodness and our evil, inextricably wound together in the fabric of our souls; our good intentions and our failures; our pride and our shame.

To Welty, we are both saints and demons, brothers and killers all. What we ultimately become comes down not to what we see, but how we see.

[Hal Brodsky · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection shows that Welty wrote short stories in a variety of styles. Some are fables, some are narratives, some are 99% dialogue driven (to me these are her best) and some are dreamlike sketches of places and people.
While I do not care for the latter category of stories, these are all so different that you never are reading "another Edora Welty story".

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

First time reader of EW (I know). A decision to read this author is based on praise offered by Ann Patchett in her "These Precious Days" book of essays.

Certainly a specific time and place frame in each of these "Thirteen Stories" Lush writing of the type one reads and then re-reads certain sentences, not because one doesn't comprehend, but because it is akin to holding a newborn child or puppy, so full of life and promise.

Adding EW's "Delta Wedding" to my to read list based on the recommendation of an author friend of mine.

Looking forward to discovering more EW.

[fyodorjoshtoyevsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

HIGH ART! 4.5! fav stories are
the wide net, lily daw, the hitchhikers, why i live at the PO, and moon lake

[Ben Fike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Figured I needed to read some Eudora Welty as part of my continuing "Introduction to Mississippi" education. It's hard to rate a short story collection. Some I liked. Others I did not care for. Still interested in digging more into Welty's work.

[tara bomp · Rating 4 out of 5]

JUST SOME THOUGHTS I'M JOTTING DOWN WHILE I GO ALONG. They're not very coherent, or a real "review", just talking about things that stood out to me that I found interesting

The Wide Net: Good story, although I feel I lacked the proper context to fully understand the interactions and what they were doing. Theme of thinking you understand what you don't at all - William believes for certain Hazel has jumped in the river, despite not even reading the entire letter. The boys that take a baby alligator just because they can - also somewhat related to William's relationship with Hazel, where she's described as very pretty but otherwise he seems to have no real interest in her. Doc is a sort of "voice of reason" in both cases.

Old Mr Marblehall: I liked the idea of a double life almost just for the sake of it. Both his families are described negatively and he seems to find fulfilment only in the having of a double life at all. It reminds me of a sort of childish thing to do - children always try and hide things from their parents, even the most mundane stuff - which links both with his having children exactly at the time when he started a double life and with his obsession - and apparently his only real interest, Weird Tales and similar magazines. This also relates to the story as a story - the premise is somewhat absurd, that nobody has noticed or cared, which makes it almost fit for that kind of magazine.

A Worn Path: Pretty stark portrait of desperation. The old woman's path reminded me of a sort of shortened down fairy story of someone's quest to save the princess or whatever, which I guess in a way is kind of what it is

A Still Moment: Some dudes want to kill him for his horse but despite outnumbering him let him go because he can't be shot easily? And then in the next paragraph this is implied to be a bad thing??? What. Whole story absolutely mystified me, I couldn't pin down characters or what was going on or get any kind of feeling out of it, and the tortured syntax was especially noticeable here. Definitely didn't enjoy it

Powerhouse: Opens with several paragraphs of racial stereotypes and racism. Blecchhh. Going to excuse myself from that

complaint: occasional weird syntax? a few sentences were ordered counter to my expectations, confusing me a bit.
-The racial descriptions bother me a bit sometimes, more than usual. Black people seem to be *actually* stupid and bad, even outside of the perceptions of the viewpoint characters.

In general I've enjoyed it. Most of the stories are good/great/amazing but there are a couple I disliked and the racism was a bit grating

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I know that Eudora Welty is considered one of the great southern writers, but personally I have a hard time understanding her writing. I think that her stories have a lot of symbolism and depth that is not caught on a quick read. You almost have to analyze, study and really think about the story. One thing I know is that she has a gift of being able to describe a character with a choice of words that bring them to life. One of my favorite stories from this book is The Worn Path, but there were several I enjoyed.

[Rasma Haidri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird little mundane people always seem to be somebody else, but Welty let's you think maybe you're one of them.

[Thekelburrows · Rating 4 out of 5]

None of these really blew my skirt up but I award Eudora Welty a rhinoceros butt's worth of stars for being an original gangster of badass Southern ladies.

[Dan Sexton · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am sorry to report that I did not like the book. None of the 13 stories really caught my attention and I kept hoping the next one in the book would be better. As a former newspaper editor, I was disappointed, as well, with the spelling errors, and just plain cavalier effect of the text (in multiple cases) Whoever did the wordsmithing / proofing of this book should return any fees charged back to the publisher. I hope your experience is better than mine. With the write up, I had high expectations for humor, situational drama with a surprise resolution, etc. None of this happened in any of the stories and, on a couple, I checked to make sure I had no missing pages since the end of the stories just left me hanging... like, "and then what?" Had I known the flavor of this book, I would never have offered to review it. I do not plan to ready other works by this author.

[C.R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a difficult review to write. On one hand, I respect Welty's gorgeous but oblique wordsmithery. On the other, I often found her slice-of-life narration frustrating. Her reader is provided no plots, no endings, only seemingly arbitrary details, as tantalizing as they may be. Yet I cannot stop thinking about her damn stories. One story in particular called Moon Lake, I thought as haunting as any I have ever read. In it the lives of poor kids in a Mississippi summer camp are portrayed with rich detail and a keen ear for dialect and dialogue, and the author creates such a sense of foreboding that I just knew something awful might happen. And it did . . . well, kind of. Eudora Welty is that kind of magician. Just when you think you know where the story is going, it takes a left turn.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am not through with all of the stories yet, but, boy, what a wild and quirky bunch of characters and circumstances Ms. Welty explores in her book! What smart and evocative writing! The settings are the rural and semi rural South of another era, and the habits of the townspeople are quite different than my own, by virtue of place and time. The specific folks that become the focus of each story are downright outlandish. The fun and the tragedy of people's often really weird and whacky thought processes that keep them going through life are what keeps me reading the stories. The book is a window on a world that I could not open or even find on my own. The introduction by Ruth M. Vande Kieft is well worth reading. In it she describes what an accomplished woman Eudora Welty was.

[Jeff Hobbs]

Read so far--

*The wide net --
Old Mr. Marblehall --
*Keela, the outcast Indian maiden --
A worn path --2
*Petrified man --
*A still moment --
*Lily Daw and the three ladies --
The hitch-hikers --1
*Powerhouse --
Why I live at the P.O. --3
Livvie (aka Livvie is back) --3
*Moon Lake --
*The bride of the Innisfallen --
***
*A piece of news --
The whistle --3
*A memory --
A curtain of green --2
*A visit of charity --
*Death of a traveling salesman --
Asphodel --2
*Shower of gold --
*The whole world knows --
No place for you, my love --1
*The burning --
*Going to Naples --
*Where is the voice coming from? --
*The demonstrators --
*The sketching trip--

[Delphine Lucas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eudora Welty is a really good writer. Her mentor was Katherine Anne Porter, whose short story collection I read concurrently. Their styles are similar. I much prefer Porter’s. Her writing is clearer, more focused. Welty’s writing seems more dreamlike, and sometimes I felt bored reading her stories. Some of the stories were just not that interesting and sometimes felt like more work than they were worth. I still think they were worth reading. This is the second collection of her short stories I have read, but I will probably read more of Porter’s work. I like it more for this genre.

[Caroline Mann · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a 3.5 rating.

Many of the stories in this collection would be 5 stars on their own, but a few lost me (particularly the last two, “Moon Lake” and “The Bride of the Innisfallen”).

My favorites, which I bet you could find online or in other collections, are “The Hitch-Hikers, “A Still Moment,” and “Why I Live at the P.O.” — the last being one of my favorite stories of all time.

[Susan Fitzgerald · Rating 4 out of 5]

At last... I think I see the joy and power of the short story. Surprisingly deep and poignant; a few in this collection kind of broke my heart: A Worn Path; The Bride of Innisfallen; and some made me laugh out loud: The Wide Net; Petrified Man; Why I Live at the P. O. Welty captures the individual nature of place and speech and perspective. Highly recommend.

[Zanny · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were some stories I really liked, and some stories I didn't like as much. Her shorter stories read well. The last two stories in the collection were really long and they were hard to follow and structured oddly. But all in all I really like her work, and I want to read her book on writing!

[Liz Banks · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had read that Eudora Welty got a lot of her inspiration by listening to other people's conversations. She excels in dialogue and her plots and characters are so varied that I believe she did listen in a lot. My favorite was "Why I live at the P.O." Enjoy!

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many of these stories are in A Curtain of Green and Other Stories, a collection I loved. The other stories were hit and miss to me. Still a good group.

[B K McIntire · Rating 3 out of 5]

Old-fashioned and belabored

These stories were not appealing to me. Of course, they are not written in today's politically-correct style. Having heard such good things about Eudora Welty, I was disappointed.

[Maggie Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the stories, The Wide Path, was assigned to my high school homeschool son, so I bought the book and read the stories myself. I really enjoyed them. I love Southern literature and especially stories of a bygone era.

[Cooper Renner · Rating 3 out of 5]

I suppose I was halfway through the novella “Moon Lake,” the 12th of the 13 stories, before I just quit in boredom. These are well-made, beautifully worded, frequently funny—and I just don’t care. Her characters don’t pull me in, her situations don’t draw me along.