Dorothy, and Other Italian Stories

A collection of short narratives set in Italian locales that examine the private lives and social interactions of foreign visitors and residents. Stories range from the depiction of a young widow under familial oversight to vignettes of a displaced youth, a social experiment, and encounters between servants and their employers. Recurring themes include grief and restraint, cultural dislocation, the conflict between outward appearance and inward feeling, and the influence of place on mood. The prose pairs close psychological observation with detailed evocations of landscape and domestic interiors, often leaving moral and emotional questions unresolved.