Friend of Women and Other Stories（ISBN=） 英文原版

　　The Los Angeles Times has lauded Louis Auchincloss as “a
novelist committed to examining the complicated layers of
character, psychology, and society.” In The Friend of Women, that
dedication shines on every page in the singular, epigrammatic style
of an American master. 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of these six previously unpublished pieces.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. Ranging from a boyhood friendship tested by the
fabrications of the McCarthy era to an Episcopal 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.