”Reunion” is a short story written by the American writer John Cheever (?). The short story was published in 1962, and than later included in a collection of stories called: ”The stories of John Cheever”. Most of his short stories are situated in upper Manhattan, New England, Westchester, and Quincy some also in Rome, Italy, where he was born. John Cheever is often called the Chekhov of the Suburbs, which means he is often compared to one of the greatest writers in history.
The essay “Living with strangers” was written by Siri Hustvedt (58), an American novelist and essayist. She is the author of several books, in which she has collected poems and essays etc. The essay was published in 2002.
The themes in the short story are, family issues, the bad behavior and lack of communication skills in well-educated people and alcoholism.
The narrator is also the son, he is telling us the story, of how his last meeting with his dad went. He is therefor reminding himself of how this was for him; this is also called a flashback. He describes himself as a boy, but we do not get the exact age. The only thing we know is, that Charlie is on the train, ”I was going from my grandmother’s in the Adirondacks to a cottage on the Cape that my mother had rented, and I wrote my father that I would be in New York between trains for an hour and a half and asked if we could have lunch together.” he chooses to make a stop to see his father. His parents are divorced and have been divorced for three years, and this was the first time he was going to see him since the split up. The boy and the father have a “reunion” and the boy is naïve to think that it was going to be a happy one.
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