It's three short novels (Porter hated the term "novella" and, much like the kinds of people who are particular about these sorts of things, was apparently a huge jerk in real life) give or take 40 pages each. The first was this fascinating indictment/celebration of storytelling itself, about how stories, which in current times tend to be hailed and exalted as some sort of magical enlightenment elixir, are in reality very very very very effective tools of delusion and deceit, in its cloaking way almost a celebration of decay, even as we can't help but rely on the lies stories feed us as a means of managing to continue trudging through life day by heavy plodding heavy plodding day. The second was an unheralded classic, such a richly woven, complex exploration of morality, responsibility, sin, laziness, and all their inherent confusions, contradictions, blessings, benedictions, and rationalizations, and about the almost inherently fatalistic way us human beings, having been granted limited intelligence, believe we can possibly, reasonably cogitate our ways through all this, because on some level we all—every last one of us!—believe our existence on Earth must (MUST!) be linked to some sort of intrinsic, universal good, even while we all secretly suspect we may actually be nothing more than spiritual orphans, abandoned, leftovers, to our own mercurial wiles, that it's a marvel the whole thing manages to hold together so extraordinarily well. These two stories, "Old Mortality" and "Noon Wine", explored enormously complex things you NEVER saw writers of this time explore in short, 40-page works, and did it in a way that was richly compelling and unsettlingly rewarding. And then the final story lands like this enormous, overwrought, sentimental, adolescent butt-turd. You'd think it wouldn't, because it's the title story, because it's an early story about a single female urban professional, because it's about the 1918 pandemic, considering what we all just went through. But it's sooooooooo boring (there are numerous dream sequences) it kills what could have been an extraordinary collection of work. I suppose the overall effect is akin to watching all three Godfather movies in one sitting. It's a god damn shame. Apparently, her entire career is just like this: wildly, frustratingly uneven. Sadly, kind of like how life is. Two stars.