What do you think?
Rate this book
Beasts of the Southern Wild and Other Stories
Back in print at last, the nine beautifully crafted tales in Beasts of the Southern Wild and Other Stories display Doris Betts at the top of her compassionate, witty, and unforgettable.
"The Ugliest Pilgrim" takes you into the adventures and into the heart of a disfigured young woman who has run away from her life in search of a better one. This award-winning story is the basis for the musical Violet, which won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. In "Hitchhiker," a wary secretary hitches a ride in a boat with a man hell-bent on saving fish; instead he saves her from the river -- and herself. And in the title story, Betts brilliantly captures the inner life of a teacher and writer struggling to control her classroom, her household, and her life.
"The Ugliest Pilgrim" takes you into the adventures and into the heart of a disfigured young woman who has run away from her life in search of a better one. This award-winning story is the basis for the musical Violet, which won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. In "Hitchhiker," a wary secretary hitches a ride in a boat with a man hell-bent on saving fish; instead he saves her from the river -- and herself. And in the title story, Betts brilliantly captures the inner life of a teacher and writer struggling to control her classroom, her household, and her life.
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1973
7 people are currently reading
907 people want to read
About the author
Doris Betts
41 books9 followersDoris Betts (1932-2012), former Chancellor of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, wrote nine novels and three collections of short stories, including The Gentle Insurrection, The Sharp Teeth of Love, Souls Raised from the Dead, which won the Southern Book Award, and Beasts of the Southern Wild, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Betts taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for 35 years. She was a Guggenheim Fellow and received a medal from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews
April 23, 2013
A) This has nothing to do with the terrific indie film of the same title.
B) No one in my book club realized that when we quickly agreed on it as our next title.
C) No one in my book club was anything less than *amazed* at how good it was, from first story to last.
B) No one in my book club realized that when we quickly agreed on it as our next title.
C) No one in my book club was anything less than *amazed* at how good it was, from first story to last.
March 1, 2021
This collection is a real mixture of good and bad short stories. The best is the first story The Ugliest Pilgrim about a young woman traveling by bus to seek a faith healer to cure her ugliness. Another story that had the potential to be good but fell short was the title story Beasts of the Southern Wild that combined two alternating narratives. One of them was about a world in which Black and White people had reversed roles and Whites were the enslaved which could have been a great story on its own but this was intermixed with a pointless story that spoiled it. Other notable stories were The Spider Gardens of Madagascar about a creepy boy obsessed with spiders and Benson Watts is Dead in Virginia about a man who has died and awakens in an alternate world. Doris Betts writing was excellent and her stories very creative but she just seemed to fail to fully pull it off.
May 21, 2020
Stirring, honest, beautiful, heartfelt...just like the southern humanity these words are written about.
July 31, 2013
Her voice blows me away -- she's on a spectrum between Flannery O'Connor and Mary Gordon for characterization, darkness, comedy, the interior of women living in the 70s (that's the Gordon likeness, that interiority, especially in "Still Life with Fruit" about an artist giving birth -- thanks, Karen McElmurray, for that recommendation). "Still Life" and "The Ugliest Pilgrim" (a story about a scarred girl going to a faith healer to get a pretty face, which was made into a musical - !) and "Burning the Bed" (about a daughter caregiving for a dying father in a claustrophobic house) were my favorites.
I love her precision and metaphors:
"his left hand drops cards evenly and in rhythm. Like a turtle, laying eggs" (14)
"I put Flick's paper in my pocketbook and there, inside, on a round mirror, my face is waiting in ambush for me." (31)
"Wanda unpinned her bun and the hair fell below her shoulders and tickled her spine. It was the color, she thought, of harmless brown garden snakes." (135)
She also delves into dream and the fantastic in this book -- marvelously strange. I might not give 5 stars to every story, but I couldn't resist giving the book as a whole 5 stars -- this woman needs to be read!
I love her precision and metaphors:
"his left hand drops cards evenly and in rhythm. Like a turtle, laying eggs" (14)
"I put Flick's paper in my pocketbook and there, inside, on a round mirror, my face is waiting in ambush for me." (31)
"Wanda unpinned her bun and the hair fell below her shoulders and tickled her spine. It was the color, she thought, of harmless brown garden snakes." (135)
She also delves into dream and the fantastic in this book -- marvelously strange. I might not give 5 stars to every story, but I couldn't resist giving the book as a whole 5 stars -- this woman needs to be read!
June 14, 2012
I decided to read this because Betts' obituary in the Oxford American said that she had taught many of today's best Southern authors at UNC Chapel Hill (including my personal favorite, Jill McCorkle). These stories show her to be a descendant of Flannery O'Connor (especially in The Ugliest Pilgrim) and a predecessor of George Saunders and Wells Tower: she focuses on Southern working-class people, but with a touch of the grotesque/absurd. Although published in 1973, this collection tackled issues that can still be controversial today: lesbianism, mental illness, abortion, interracial liaisons, and ambivalence about motherhood. Highly recommended for fans of Southern literature. I especially loved the chilling ending of The Spider Gardens of Madagascar.
October 4, 2016
An odd, beautiful, and unnerving collection of stories. Unapologetically told from the White, female, Southern perspective, these delve into a variety of topics - childbirth; faith healing; interracial sex; dreamworld journeys - that I found both strange and mesmerizing. While something of a time capsule, perhaps, it is certainly an engaging, thoughtful, and worthwhile read.
December 23, 2025
Beasts of the Southern Wild and Other Stories by Doris Betts (Harper & Row 1973) (Fiction) (4109).
Author Doris Betts is a North Carolina native who specializes in regional fiction. Her work is a bit too ordered to be described as “grit lit,” but her writing is certainly bent in the southern direction.
This is a rather uneven collection of short stories. My favorite selection is “The Spider Farmers of Madagascar,” which explores the interior workings of the life of a ten year old narrator who lives with a mentally ill or actively disturbed widowed parent.
I found the other offerings in this collection to be unremarkable and unmemorable.
My rating: 7/10, finished 12/22/25 (4109).
February 16, 2025
This collection contains some truly thought-provoking stories about issues facing women. Ranging from historical to dystopian settings, these bite-size tales are perfect for reading over a glass of wine or a cup of coffee, but they will linger for hours.
August 25, 2017
The last story is great, the others (that I read) are meh.
March 4, 2018
Amazing short stories!
October 20, 2018
Well written and original but I didn't care for the subjects too much.
August 14, 2019
Had a strong Flannery O'Connor/ Southern Gothic vibe and was a fun read.
February 21, 2022
Yesssssss
Read
July 2, 2023DNF
I am not the audience. I read the first four. After each one I felt as if a mixture of rain and sweat in high humidity encased me. I don't know why I felt so unhygienic and uncomfortable.
I am not the audience. I read the first four. After each one I felt as if a mixture of rain and sweat in high humidity encased me. I don't know why I felt so unhygienic and uncomfortable.
June 2, 2016
This book came into my hands by accident. My partner saw the play Violet and brought the book home from the library to read the story it is based on. I picked it up and started reading these surreal stories that come out of Southern Grotesque writing. They are surprising and intense. Violet is the young woman in the story, The Ugliest Pilgrim, she has a wound on her face and is on a journey to get it healed and restore her beauty by a radio minister, who of course is a sham.
A review of the play: http://www.dramainthehood.net/2016/03...
The last story in the book, "Benson Watts Is Dead and in Virginia," three dead people travel across a landscape. The woman is pregnant and doesn't know she is dead. Then a man shows up who knows 'the rules' to avoid going back. They are: 1-Dwell, then travel, 2-Join forces, 3-Disremember. So off they go, they build a large canoe from a tree to take them down a river. Eventually they wind up in a large body of water and on an island. We are totally drawn in to their wandering lives. One day the woman deflates and is dead, again, the first man is left alone like he started. I love the sentence in this story, "He stayed gone a long time." Also from the Tibet Book of the Dead, it is 49 days for the amount of time it takes to pass between death and further life.
In the story, "The Spider Gardens of Madagascar" a young man learns his father died in a car crash, his mother survived. We begin to learn about their relationship, he knows she was the cause of his father's death. He starts collecting spiders for a school project knowing she is not interested in spiders, he must do something she will not infringe upon. We feel her overbearing nature and his recoil. He grooms poisonous black widow spiders and the final line of the story is, "Someday soon, Coker was going to have to decide where he would turn her and her children loose—in Lillian's room, or his."
I'm glad this book showed up by accident, it holds many strong emotions in each story. And each story creates it's own world. The title of the book has no relationship to the movie of the same name.
A review of the play: http://www.dramainthehood.net/2016/03...
The last story in the book, "Benson Watts Is Dead and in Virginia," three dead people travel across a landscape. The woman is pregnant and doesn't know she is dead. Then a man shows up who knows 'the rules' to avoid going back. They are: 1-Dwell, then travel, 2-Join forces, 3-Disremember. So off they go, they build a large canoe from a tree to take them down a river. Eventually they wind up in a large body of water and on an island. We are totally drawn in to their wandering lives. One day the woman deflates and is dead, again, the first man is left alone like he started. I love the sentence in this story, "He stayed gone a long time." Also from the Tibet Book of the Dead, it is 49 days for the amount of time it takes to pass between death and further life.
In the story, "The Spider Gardens of Madagascar" a young man learns his father died in a car crash, his mother survived. We begin to learn about their relationship, he knows she was the cause of his father's death. He starts collecting spiders for a school project knowing she is not interested in spiders, he must do something she will not infringe upon. We feel her overbearing nature and his recoil. He grooms poisonous black widow spiders and the final line of the story is, "Someday soon, Coker was going to have to decide where he would turn her and her children loose—in Lillian's room, or his."
I'm glad this book showed up by accident, it holds many strong emotions in each story. And each story creates it's own world. The title of the book has no relationship to the movie of the same name.
Read
November 23, 2023So you should know right off the bat that this book was not the inspiration or original version of the movie from a few years back. And you should also know that it’s unfortunate they took the title, because this is a really strong collection and the title story is pretty much perfect.
This collection has nine stories and Doris Betts is incredibly wry, wicked, funny, and poignant of a writer. The collection opens with “Ugly Pilgrim” about a disfigured woman running away. Other of the shorter stories includes the “Hitch-Hiker” and “Mother in Law”. By the time we get to the title story, it just becomes completely unhinged.
The story is about a teacher in a high school whose school and home-life are demanding, awful, hilariously rough, and so dreams about a kind of almost utopian space where she can love another man and send her own husband to some kind of prison. The scenes in the schoolhouse are hilarious and so true to life. It’s a nice reminder how much of stories about school are rightfully told from the perspective of kids who have been abused by the system and not enough about teachers who are also abused by the system. Her description of kids asking to turn in anything, anything to stand in for what is assigned is hilariously accurate and a little reassuring given it’s 45 years later and still happens.
The rest of the collection is mostly good with one or two stories being less than that. One more story really shines, and that is “Still Life with Fruit” which tells of a truly nightmarish hospital stay of a woman ten days past her due date.
This collection has nine stories and Doris Betts is incredibly wry, wicked, funny, and poignant of a writer. The collection opens with “Ugly Pilgrim” about a disfigured woman running away. Other of the shorter stories includes the “Hitch-Hiker” and “Mother in Law”. By the time we get to the title story, it just becomes completely unhinged.
The story is about a teacher in a high school whose school and home-life are demanding, awful, hilariously rough, and so dreams about a kind of almost utopian space where she can love another man and send her own husband to some kind of prison. The scenes in the schoolhouse are hilarious and so true to life. It’s a nice reminder how much of stories about school are rightfully told from the perspective of kids who have been abused by the system and not enough about teachers who are also abused by the system. Her description of kids asking to turn in anything, anything to stand in for what is assigned is hilariously accurate and a little reassuring given it’s 45 years later and still happens.
The rest of the collection is mostly good with one or two stories being less than that. One more story really shines, and that is “Still Life with Fruit” which tells of a truly nightmarish hospital stay of a woman ten days past her due date.
July 10, 2015
I don't think I'm sophisticated enough for short story collections. I find myself at the end of most short stories asking, "Okay, but what was the point of that?"
I learned about a sub-genre whilst reading this - "Southern Grotesque." This would include Flanery O'Connor (high school required reading), Harry Crews (tiresome), Cormac McCarthy (an endurance test in every volume), Carson McCullers (a secret joy), William Faulkner (classic), and among others, Ms. Betts here. I have EXTREMELY mixed reactions to tales which incorporate casual cruelty, cheap lives, predominate religion and throwaway racism as parts of the "Southern experience" without really drawing any particular conclusions about them, but I'm mistaken, because Ms. Betts taught at University, and I am a blunt tool which, unless properly oriented, misses the point. What I know is that my experience as a Southerner is never quite captured and much of what I read rings hollow.
That said, a couple of these stories are entertaining in the way of old Twilight Zones episodes, while other meander without traveling. The characters are engaging, but the women are often broad sweeps while the most engaging character for me was a child. (Again, this could be all about me.) At least two tales here seem to be indulgences of then taboo mixed race romance fantasies of the late 70s. She's a descriptive craftsperson and wonderful on occastion with words, but I was often left wanting more, or possibly less.
I learned about a sub-genre whilst reading this - "Southern Grotesque." This would include Flanery O'Connor (high school required reading), Harry Crews (tiresome), Cormac McCarthy (an endurance test in every volume), Carson McCullers (a secret joy), William Faulkner (classic), and among others, Ms. Betts here. I have EXTREMELY mixed reactions to tales which incorporate casual cruelty, cheap lives, predominate religion and throwaway racism as parts of the "Southern experience" without really drawing any particular conclusions about them, but I'm mistaken, because Ms. Betts taught at University, and I am a blunt tool which, unless properly oriented, misses the point. What I know is that my experience as a Southerner is never quite captured and much of what I read rings hollow.
That said, a couple of these stories are entertaining in the way of old Twilight Zones episodes, while other meander without traveling. The characters are engaging, but the women are often broad sweeps while the most engaging character for me was a child. (Again, this could be all about me.) At least two tales here seem to be indulgences of then taboo mixed race romance fantasies of the late 70s. She's a descriptive craftsperson and wonderful on occastion with words, but I was often left wanting more, or possibly less.
June 24, 2016
Like some others, I sought out this book because the excellent musical “Violet” was based on the first of the stories in this collection, but I read all the way through.
So, first: that story, “The Ugliest Pilgrim” is a rather slight tale of a young scarred woman who travels to see a healing preacher, and meets a couple of soldiers on the trip. It is the only upbeat story in the collection. I have to say that the authors of the musical expanded the story creatively and intelligently.
I’d never heard of Doris Betts. The stories mostly describe disturbed or mistreated women and my first reaction along the way was that they would have appeared in women’s magazines - but I see from the copyright page that those published prior to the book were in literary magazines. While for the most part, the stories didn’t seem so outstanding to me, Betts is a good writer with clean prose that I very much admired, and is able to capture shaded and unstable moods. She didn’t shy from describing bodily functions. Only one story seemed to me true southern gothic; only one ended on a false note; the final story is a lovely, dreamlike tale of some kind of purgatory.
“Still Life with Fruit” is a harrowing tale of an ordinary birth. I liked the ending: “Something crawled under her skin, like the spider who webbed her eyelids tightening all lines. In both her eyes, the spider spilled her hot, wet eggs - those on the right for bitterness, and those on the left for joy.”
So, first: that story, “The Ugliest Pilgrim” is a rather slight tale of a young scarred woman who travels to see a healing preacher, and meets a couple of soldiers on the trip. It is the only upbeat story in the collection. I have to say that the authors of the musical expanded the story creatively and intelligently.
I’d never heard of Doris Betts. The stories mostly describe disturbed or mistreated women and my first reaction along the way was that they would have appeared in women’s magazines - but I see from the copyright page that those published prior to the book were in literary magazines. While for the most part, the stories didn’t seem so outstanding to me, Betts is a good writer with clean prose that I very much admired, and is able to capture shaded and unstable moods. She didn’t shy from describing bodily functions. Only one story seemed to me true southern gothic; only one ended on a false note; the final story is a lovely, dreamlike tale of some kind of purgatory.
“Still Life with Fruit” is a harrowing tale of an ordinary birth. I liked the ending: “Something crawled under her skin, like the spider who webbed her eyelids tightening all lines. In both her eyes, the spider spilled her hot, wet eggs - those on the right for bitterness, and those on the left for joy.”
September 21, 2014
I only actually read the first story in the book.
"The Ugliest Pilgrim"
which I read because it is the story that the Broadway musical "Violet" that I recently saw is based on.
It was cool to see Sutton Foster play the leading role. She did a fantastic job!
"Violet" (the play) ends differently than "The Ugliest Pilgrim" (the book) which disappointed Kary even though he loved the musical/play despite the wrong ending. We chose to see Violet because Kary teaches the story. I think the ending of "The Ugliest Pilgrim" is more realistic for the 1960's story that it is; whereas, the ending of Violet is done to intrigue the more modern thinkers. The new ending didn't quite make sense to me when I saw the play. I was happy to, afterwards, read the story and see that the ending made better sense.
The story shows how a difficult life can turn hopeful even though we realize that Violet's (the heroin's) plans to overcome her difficulties are unrealistic and look totally non-hopeful. The musical (of course) was much more fun than the story. However, I did enjoy reading it and can recommend it but once was enough. (thus the 3 stars)
"The Ugliest Pilgrim"
which I read because it is the story that the Broadway musical "Violet" that I recently saw is based on.
It was cool to see Sutton Foster play the leading role. She did a fantastic job!
"Violet" (the play) ends differently than "The Ugliest Pilgrim" (the book) which disappointed Kary even though he loved the musical/play despite the wrong ending. We chose to see Violet because Kary teaches the story. I think the ending of "The Ugliest Pilgrim" is more realistic for the 1960's story that it is; whereas, the ending of Violet is done to intrigue the more modern thinkers. The new ending didn't quite make sense to me when I saw the play. I was happy to, afterwards, read the story and see that the ending made better sense.
The story shows how a difficult life can turn hopeful even though we realize that Violet's (the heroin's) plans to overcome her difficulties are unrealistic and look totally non-hopeful. The musical (of course) was much more fun than the story. However, I did enjoy reading it and can recommend it but once was enough. (thus the 3 stars)
September 5, 2015
This book was a major disappointment for me, and likely would be for most of my goodreads friends. It has _nothing_ to do with the movie of the same name, which is based on a different short story altogether.
Doris Betts, instead, writes disconcerting stories, usually centered on American white people in the 1950s. Many of the stories include attention to heterosexual flirtation, disability, the aching contradictions of hope, and the racism of the protagonists.
Even more disturbingly, Betts includes a speculative story set in some post-revolutionary 1950s America where Blacks have established brutal slavery over southern whites. The story centers on the sexual relationship between a white slave and her black master. Whatever nuance the story may offer, it also advances a version of post-revolutionary society that corresponds closely to the paranoid hysteria of the racist imagination. As post-revolutionary depictions go, it is the most reactionary I have encountered.
_Beasts of the Southern Wild_ is, all in all, a book of racist short stories about racist people.
Doris Betts, instead, writes disconcerting stories, usually centered on American white people in the 1950s. Many of the stories include attention to heterosexual flirtation, disability, the aching contradictions of hope, and the racism of the protagonists.
Even more disturbingly, Betts includes a speculative story set in some post-revolutionary 1950s America where Blacks have established brutal slavery over southern whites. The story centers on the sexual relationship between a white slave and her black master. Whatever nuance the story may offer, it also advances a version of post-revolutionary society that corresponds closely to the paranoid hysteria of the racist imagination. As post-revolutionary depictions go, it is the most reactionary I have encountered.
_Beasts of the Southern Wild_ is, all in all, a book of racist short stories about racist people.
March 30, 2008
This collection of short stories contains one of my absolute favorites, "The Ugliest Pilgrim." It is so exquisitely written with more said in 29 pages than most authors say in works 10 times as long. Violet Karl, a disfigured young woman, is traveling by bus from NC to Tulsa to be healed by a televangelist. Cruelty, humor, hypocrisy, and courage are all on display around her. The story contains my favorite ending in all of literature as Violet is being chased by the soldier that she meets & falls for on the journey ("But he's running as hard as he can and he's faster than me. And, oh! Praise God! He's catching me!"). So hopeful, it puts a lump in my throat every time ...it's perfect.
The other stories in the collection are vastly different from one another, each more creative than the next. One thing that struck me was how contemporary they sounded even though they had been written almost forty years ago.
The other stories in the collection are vastly different from one another, each more creative than the next. One thing that struck me was how contemporary they sounded even though they had been written almost forty years ago.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 23, 2014
Not sure why I didn't like this more. It had all the elements. Good prose, at times amazing. The stories are all pretty dark which I also usually like. All these stories are too similar. It's like- I get it already this person is depressed- repressed- doesn't give a shit. Too much illness? Cancer? Too much emotional disconnection that it's unsettling? There are so many things that I usually like in writing that I guess they all start to work against each other- Doris Betts is trying to hard I think as I am reading it- even though she has the chops to make almost no effort. Why?! I stumbled through a lot of these, frustrated that they drug on and on and on, so thick with dark foreshadowing ....
There are a few gems, but I waited a long time to get my hands on this as overall I feel pretty disappointed. Very disappointed.
There are a few gems, but I waited a long time to get my hands on this as overall I feel pretty disappointed. Very disappointed.
September 6, 2012
Solid collection of short stories that truly transport you to the South in the 60s. Her characters are ridden with isms and flaws that make them all the more relatable or fascinating to watch as the story unfolds. And there is a certain vividness to her stories that I don't always feel with short works of fiction.
And, as an FYI, this book is not the source of the recent movie of the same name - but there is a windabout connection (see here for story). Although that is what made this book catch my eye on the National Book Award website (this book was a finalist in 1974).
This book made me interested in reading more by Betts.
And, as an FYI, this book is not the source of the recent movie of the same name - but there is a windabout connection (see here for story). Although that is what made this book catch my eye on the National Book Award website (this book was a finalist in 1974).
This book made me interested in reading more by Betts.
November 24, 2015
Research for a show I am directing (Violet, a musical based on Betts' short story, The Ugliest Pilgrim) led me to Doris Betts. I have discovered a real appreciation and enjoyment of southern women writers, and recommend this book of stories to anyone who is looking for a real southern experience served up in a beautiful and authentic way. In The Ugliest Pilgrim : " Some mornings a deer and I scare up each other in the brush, and his heart stops, and my heart stops. Everything stops till he plunges away. The next pulsebeat nearly knocks you down." Passages like this are food for my word-lovin' soul! Revealing, thought-provoking, enjoyable reading.
August 15, 2024
I take it this book has not aged well. If you’re interested in subpar southern writing that highlights the dominance of atrocious southern thinking, go for it.
Decent vocabulary, and writing style, but most of the endings left me feeling empty.
I was hoping to find understanding for her constant use of slurs and negative connotations associated with the black characters in the book. But, nope, just group of stories about racist white people living their normal lives.
“One of the men- a runt with a chimpanzee face.”
“Yesterday, we had a nigger couch to cover…. Beats me why they smell so different.”
-Excerpt from Beasts
Decent vocabulary, and writing style, but most of the endings left me feeling empty.
I was hoping to find understanding for her constant use of slurs and negative connotations associated with the black characters in the book. But, nope, just group of stories about racist white people living their normal lives.
“One of the men- a runt with a chimpanzee face.”
“Yesterday, we had a nigger couch to cover…. Beats me why they smell so different.”
-Excerpt from Beasts
July 15, 2009
While some of these stories do feel a little dated, overall, they have lasting themes that are still compelling 30+ after they were written. This collection includes the highly anthologized "The Ugliest Pilgrim" which is as nearly as perfect as a shortstory can get. Also quite incredibly are the title story and "Still Life with Fruit". I highly recommed this book to writers especially as the structure of these stories is impressive. A master class in short story writing.
Want to read
May 24, 2013At first I wanted to read the book in which the awarding winning movie was based. I found out that this is not one and the same. Although the movie was originally an adaptation of a play, they simply used the same name. However, my interest is intrigued by the reviews given about Doris Betts. I will still read "Beasts of the Southern Wild."
June 22, 2013
I admit to a small amount of prejudice, as the author was a friend of the family. That said, I think her work flew under the radar much of her career, and I hope a new generation of readers will take a chance and enjoy her writing. A thoughtful writer with a very keen eye for the inner struggles of humanity.
August 10, 2012
This collection of short stories has one of the best stories I've read in my 66 years: "The Ugliest Pilgrim." This is a story of hope, sorrow and redemption, as only Betts can tell it. The story was made into an Academy Award winning short film in1981/82.
February 7, 2016
This is probably the worst book of short stories I've ever read. There's nothing redeeming about any of them, in this atrocious example of America's worst decade for fiction. I can't understand why so many people at UNC thought so much of Betts. She couldn't write, full stop.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews