MISS MURIEL AND OTHER STORIES

by Ann Petry ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 10, 1971

An interesting retrospective collection of stories by an author whose before-Montgomery intuitions of black consciousness -- particularly her novel of Harlem life, The Street -- achieved some currency in the '40's. From this early period three stories here are outstanding: ""Miss Muriel,"" ""The Broken Mirror,"" and ""Has Anybody Seen Miss Dora Dean?"" in the first two, a moderately successful black family in an all-white upstate New York town, as seen through the eyes of the twelve-year-old daughter, seemingly suffers no overt discrimination. And yet what should have been the summer gaiety of family matters -- a charming aunt and her suitors, the semi-humorous dental excursion of a boisterous father -- opens into savagery and bitterness within the everpresent tether of racial fears and constraints. In ""Dora Dean"" the pressure of white identifications to which an elegant young butler succumbs corrodes a marriage and causes his suicide. At the close his widow, crippled with disillusion and contempt, dies with a gift of Sevres porcelain. Other stories record the insidiousness of white pressures, and worse, black acceptance. A Harlem junk peddler is alienated from his neighbors by the bizarre presence of what he assumes is a black talisman -- a huge statue; a child is tormented at school; and a riot blows up in Harlem from the grief of gentle people. The quiet sensibility of Miss Petry's style is not quite up to rough-grained urban realities, but there is much that is moving, and her small town tales are superb.

Pub Date: Aug. 10, 1971

ISBN: 0758225075

Page Count: -

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1971

Categories: FICTION