Love at a Girls’ School and Other Stories by Diana Altman

Love at a Girls’ School and Other Stories by Diana Altman
Publisher: Tapley Cove Press
Genre: General Fiction
Rating: 4 stars
Reviewed by Lavender

LOVE AT A GIRLS’ SCHOOL, is a funny, touching collection of short stories previously published in the Notre Dame Review, North American Review, The Sea Letter, and other respected literary journals. Using her penetrating eye, wicked sense of humor, and vivid imagination, Diana Altman shares her take on college life in the 1960’s in stories such as, Love at a Girls’ School, in which young lovers struggle to find privacy in an era of prudish college rules. The setting of an all-girls’ school adds an extra layer of intimacy and vulnerability to the stories. The school becomes a microcosm of the world where young hearts learn about the unexpected flaws of the adults whose authority they must obey. In Receptions with the Poet, we meet Theodore Howland, a famous Pulitzer Prize winning poet who was the narrator’s beloved teacher at college. His betrayal of her does not dim the narrator’s loyalty to him and when they meet years after she has graduated, they still have a deep connection. Waiting for Jasmine, is set in recent times and takes the reader inside a shelter for homeless women where life is sometimes violent and often confusing not because of the women who come to the shelter for food and a bed, but because of the eccentric and unbalanced women who work in the shelter. Itty Bitty Betsy is a tiny secretary who works in the narrator’s hobo bag giving her the items she requests so the narrator won’t have to scrounge around in there to find things. The stories are witty, poignant, and often hilarious. A fast-moving, easy to read and entertaining collection by a master of the form.

This is a collection of imaginative stories that is sure to include something for many different literary tastes. These are not sit-on-the-edge-of-your-seat tales but rather slices of life of everyday people that readers could possibly relate to.

The insights gleaned will come upon pondering the stories during and after having read them. Different types of people are represented here as well as a variety of settings and even time frames.

The author does well in capturing human nature, and her stories have their share of surprises in them. You might think the story is heading in a certain direction than discover something new and unexpected by the end.

Love at a Girls’ School and Other Stories is a short collection, and readers are bound to remember their favorites for a long time.