Across the Years

Eighteen stories about the difference between what people meant to do and what they did: a wife who keeps a diary, a man who comes home after twenty years, a child who understands the grown-ups perfectly. Porter trained as a singer in Boston before turning to fiction, and in 1913 gave the language a word — Pollyanna — that has been used against her ever since; these quieter pieces are the evidence that the reputation is unfair. Fifty-seven plates by painters including Edvard Munch and Childe Hassam, all windows and window light, give these stories of looking back their proper frame.