Friend of Mankind & Other Stories

These stories, ten in all, take place in Ireland, New York City and Washington, D.C., and Virginia, Texas, and Colorado. The characters represent the various stages of man - from boyhood and youth to the first precincts of old age. John Lionel, who appeared in four stories collected in Julian Mazor's earlier volume, Washington and Baltimore, appears here in four more, chronicling his growing up in Washington. With a finely tuned ear for speech, the author conveys a vivid sense of place and of the spirit of the times. As he portrays a young boy in trouble, an adolescent in love (mired in self-doubt and imminent heartbreak), a Texas high-school football player, a man on the verge of marriage and one on the verge of divorce, a middle-aged writer struggling to understand his life, and an older man in the sorrowful and complicated throes of marriage to a younger woman, Mazor writes with compassion, irony, and humor, and with a clear-eyed affection for each of these individuals. In his telling, their stories become w