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Diana Altman
Author
Love at a Girls' School
Diana Altman, author
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.
Reviews
Altman (author of We Never Told) delivers an eclectic collection exploring the nuances and strangeness of everyday life, the sharp immediate dramas that explode from tense situations. She balances hefty character drama—the weighty “Unwanted Babies,” where a pregnant teenager is forced to give her baby up at birth, only to spend her entire life searching for her lost daughter—with the whimsical, as in “Itty Bitty Betsy” chronicling the life of a petite purse secretary, meant to help women with their untidy purses. Even the most seasoned reader will find moments of surprise and tenderness in this collection.

The collection flits between time periods, heavy with hints of nostalgia and sentiment. The titular story recounts youthful romance amid the changing social code of the 1960s, while “Receptions with the Poet” paints an atmospheric portrait of an English professor and student who find themselves pushed together, pulled apart, and then drawn together again at a reading by Robert Lowell. Altman probes the depths of intensity under a cover of lighthearted humor as well, as in “A Night at the BSS” (Battered Snorers Society), where a group of snorers swap stories of frustration in a repurposed ballet studio, only for the night to descend into violent chaos.

Altman’s prose is both acerbic and poignant, flaunting sharp turns of phrase—“I began to notice Jesus everywhere at the shelter. Sometimes it felt as if I’d fallen into a passion play in which half the players were saviors and the other half in need of saving”—and tightly woven dialogue to keep readers invested. As in the fish-out-of-water protagonist in “A Little Jew at the Farm,” who finds her footing as she tends to animals in the Catskills, Altman’s stories are touching, each a delicate study on the foibles and fears that make us human.

Takeaway: Scintillating collection that probes the intense dramas of everyday life.

Comparable Titles: Mira Sethi’s Are You Enjoying?, Ottessa Moshfegh’s Homesick for Another World.

Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A-
Marketing copy: B+

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