Early Sorrow by Various authors
"Early Sorrow" is a poignant anthology edited by Charlotte Zolotow that features ten short stories exploring the theme of "early sorrow," a concept denoting the intense emotional experiences faced by children and young adults. Each narrative presents a unique perspective on youthful pain, disappointment, and loss, capturing the complexities of growing up. For instance, Reynolds Price's "Michael Egerton" highlights the struggles of an eleven-year-old boy grappling with friendship and the painful realities of coming-of-age, amid the backdrop of a summer camp. Other notable stories in the collection include works by acclaimed authors such as Carson McCullers, H. E. Bates, and E. L. Doctorow, each addressing the emotional challenges faced by young protagonists in various contexts.
Zolotow, a respected figure in children's literature, curates these stories with a focus on authentic emotional depth, reflecting her understanding of the nuanced feelings experienced by youth. The collection aims to resonate with readers by portraying juvenile experiences with sensitivity and insight, making it a compelling read for anyone interested in the complexities of childhood emotions and relationships.
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Early Sorrow by Various authors
Edited by Charlotte Zolotow
First published: 1986
Subjects: Coming-of-age, death, emotions, family, and friendship
Type of work: Short fiction
Recommended Ages: 13-18
Form and Content
In this companion volume to An Overpraised Season (1973), Charlotte Zolotow has collected ten short stories in which a child or young adult experiences what Zolotow calls “early sorrow,” personal pain made more acute by youth, a “time of terrible intensity.”
Reynolds Price’s poignant “Michael Egerton” is representative of the collection’s theme. Its eleven-year-old narrator, who seems unusually sensitive and observant, although insufficiently mature to act according to his own principles, tells the self-incriminating story of his summer camp friendship with Michael Egerton, whose simple, unguarded honesty and thoughtful way of listening attract the narrator. He is flattered that Michael, the star of his cabin baseball team—someone clearly more poised, experienced, and mature than he is—seems to value him above the other boys. They spend their summer together, growing closer through talk. On the afternoon of the camp baseball playoffs, however, Michael’s abrupt discovery that he has a “new father” so deeply troubles him that he skips the game, causing his team to lose. Angry, thoughtless, and immature, his cabin-mates grow increasingly cruel to Michael, until, on the final night of camp, the narrator watches as they tie Michael up, spread-eagled, and leave him in the cabin while they march off to the awards banquet. By the time that the narrator sneaks back to set him free, Michael has locked himself in the bathroom. Although the narrator longs to talk to Michael, he cannot make himself do what may be difficult, and so he returns to the larger group and the banquet without a word. The unembellished and objective style of the story is all the more sorrowful because it suggests how deeply the narrator now needs to record accurately his own lapse of kindness and friendship, the things that he so valued in Michael, and perhaps to do penance for it.
Other stories in the collection address youthful disappointment and loss in different ways. In Carson McCullers’ “Like That,” a thirteen-year-old girl becomes bitter and angry when her eighteen-year-old sister, Sis, distances herself from her close family in favor of a tumultuous, newly sexual relationship. In H. E. Bates’s “Nina,” a seventeen-year-old girl experiences for the first time the confusing combination of love, loss, and jealousy when she grows attached to a handsome musician friend of her dead father, only to discover that he is in love with her beautiful mother. In E. L. Doctorow’s “The Writer in the Family,” a young man named Jonathan is bullied by an authoritative aunt into writing letters pretending that his never-successful, now-dead father is alive and prosperous, for the sake of his hospitalized grandmother, who does not know that the father is dead. Jonathan suffers family criticism but learns something relevant about his father and himself when he chooses to kill off his father in writing in order to get on with his own life. Other stories in the collection are Elizabeth Enright’s “A Distant Bell,” Harold Brodkey’s “The State of Grace,” James Purdy’s “Short Papa,” Elizabeth Bowen’s “The Visitor,” Stephen Vincent Benét’s “Too Early Spring,” and Katherine Mansfield’s “The Garden Party.” In all these stories, the juvenile protagonists are portrayed as intelligent and sensitive, although flawed.
Critical Context
Charlotte Zolotow, the editor of Early Sorrow, is a widely respected author of more than sixty children’s books, including the Caldecott Honor Books The Storm Book (1952) and Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present (1962); The New York Times outstanding book of the year and School Library Journal best book of the year William’s Doll (1972); the Christopher Award winner My Grandson Lew (1974); and the Redbook Award winner, I Know a Lady (1984). In addition to her prodigious work as an author, Zolotow has led a distinguished career as an editor and publisher of children’s books for Harper & Row, as well as for her own publishing imprint, the Charlotte Zolotow Books division. Zolotow’s own writing is marked by her unerring sensitivity to the feelings, both ferocious and fragile, of the young children for whom she writes. She brings this concern for honest and accurate emotion to Early Sorrow, selecting only those works that treat juvenile experience and emotion with the depth and feeling that she senses in her readers.