A Glimpse of Scarlet: And Other Stories

These stories of upper-middle-class family life concern relationships between men and women, mistrust and infidelities, broken families, and stepparents and stepchildren. With characteristic delicacy and empathy, Robinson probes the terrible emotional constrictions her characters suffer in such stories as "Handicapped," "The Time for Kissing," and "Tears Before Bedtime." Other stories trace the complexities of friendship and forgiveness and the devotion and resignation of old age. In the title story, a suspicious wife makes much of her husband's casual lunch date, recalling her own affair and that of a couple seen by chance on the street--in "a moment of widening freedom, possibility" implied merely by "a glimpse of scarlet" in the woman's scarf or sleeve. Robinson's stories have been published in The New Yorker , Atlantic , and Southern Review . She is also the author of the novel Summer Light ( LJ 6/1/88) and Georgia O'Keeffe: A Life ( LJ 9/15/89). A touchingly intimate, human collection.