text: I'm sure most people will come to Fitzgerald through her novels, so I have to excuse myself as a first time reader who just happened to pick up these short stories.  I still haven't decided if I enjoyed the collection, but they are unique.  I thought the first story was by far the best, but after that, the quality varied widely.  Unlike a classic short story writer (someone like Guy de Mauppassant), these stories have NO resolution for the most part.  In fact, they leave you with that feeling of listening to music and waiting to shift back into the  major key.  Discordant is the word I'm looking for.  The settings take the reader all over the globe and across three different centuries.  I suspect most would enjoy her novels more (I am certainly heading in that direction to read them next), but I can't say since I haven't read them myself.  Overall, I found this collection a bit unsettling, but still well written.  I'm sure her fans will enjoy them more than I did on this first encounter
  