Short Stories, Long Shadows

I first encountered Gina Berriault’s magnificent “Women in Their Beds” two decades ago when I was on the National Book Critics Circle board, and we gave the book our fiction prize. Throughout her career — she died in 1999 at 73 and published four novels as well as two earlier collections — Berriault was well regarded by juries and critics (“Women in Their Beds” also received a PEN/Faulkner and a Rea Award for the Short Story), but overlooked by a substantial readership. As to why this is, I can only conjecture that she