Analyse af Nina Banks novelle 'The Best Possible Light'

This is an American short story written by Nina Bank. In this story we meet a family. A mother and her three grown up children.

The story is told by the character Nina who is the mother. The narrator is a first person narrator. She tells about her and her childrens´ life.

The main character in the story is Barney. He is the narrator´s middle child. He is 34 years old but looks like he is 21. He is described as a short and muscular man with a great nose. Barney lives in Chicago. He is divorced with a woman called Julie, a woman that the whole family clearly liked and still consider as a member of the family. The first impression we get of him is that he is some kind of a womanizer. “As ever, he has brought a woman with him. (Page 1 ll. 1)” The woman he now is in a relationship with is called Laurel, she is an entomologist. The relationship seems serious. The narrator says on page 4 ll. “It occurs to me that I have not seen him this gentle with anyone since Julie, his ex-wife”.

As I mentioned before, Nina has three grown up children, two girls and one boy. Isabelle is the oldest daughter, Barney the middle child and P.K is the youngest daughter. Nina lives alone in New York. She is divorced. The children call her by her given name, Nina.