The Lion’s Den

A story by V.S. Pritchett of a seventy years old husband and wife, facing the hopelessness of past habits, not helped by the recurrent air raids, now with a visit from their 40 year old son. The mother wants all three of them to be together again as in the idyllic, more hopeful past. I was an only child, too, now 72, and her feelings affect me deeply. She feels her personal entropy of hopelessness equally deeply. Meanwhile, the father still has his faith, his faith in his belongings and no doubt in his God, that the air raids won’t harm them – and the mother surreptitiously shows the son all the father’s treasures, some quite gratuitous, including his sole favourite painting of Daniel in the eponymous den. I know what that means, without knowing exactly what it does mean to the father here. I do not have the same faith as this father, but I have my own treasures, these books I read and publicly build into a Gestalt, and my photos of frozen time, of time still happening around me, at least for the moment. A life changing as well as a life affirming story, despite its moving perceptions of sadness and angst.

From review here: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2020/02/11/essential-stories-v-s-pritchett/