Nell Freudenberger’s brilliantly observed debut story collection
The debut collection of Nell Freudenberger, who first came to national attention with the 2001 New Yorker publication of the title story, Lucky Girls encompasses five novella length stories set in Southeast Asia and on the Indian subcontinent.
In “Lucky Girls,” an American woman who has been involved in a five-year affair with a married Indian man feels bound, following his untimely death, to her memories of him and to her adopted country. And in “Letter from the Last Bastion,” a teenage girl begins a correspondence with a middle aged male novelist, who, having built his reputation writing about his experiences as a soldier in Vietnam, confides in her the secret truth of those experiences, and the lie that has defined his life as a man.