First published 1958
The narrator sits by her window, gazing at her garden while her husband Richard and their two children visit his parents. In the solitude of her empty house, she reflects on recent events that brought her friend's teenage daughter Stella into their troubled home. Richard moves between affairs with other women. Her son carries himself with constant gloom. Her daughter notices nothing around her. The narrator watches a baby bird in the linden tree outside and thinks about Stella, the confused teenager who recently suffered a sudden and catastrophic death. As the weekend unfolds in isolation, the narrator pieces together the domestic tensions that led to disaster. This story of family dysfunction builds toward an explosive conclusion that transforms personal crisis into something far larger and more destructive.
Genres: literary-fiction, domestic-fiction, 20th-century, psychological-thriller, family-drama
Vibes: atmospheric, claustrophobic, dark, introspective, melancholic, psychologically-tense
Tropes: domestic-secrets, slow-burn-revelation, tragedy, unreliable-narrator
Setting: garden, house
Period: weekend
80 pages · Paperback · New Directions
Content warnings: child-death, death, domestic-violence, emotional-abuse