I’ve taught and written about a number Bowen stories over the years – ‘Mysterious Kor’, ‘The Cat Jumps’, and ‘The Disinherited’ come to mind – but ‘Look at all those Roses’ is one that I’ve gone back to several times since I started trying to write short stories. Claustrophobia, repression, and the classic scenario of the traveller forced to ask for help from strangers (which I see crops up in elsewhere in my choices), are combined in a story that manages to be creepy while remaining inexplicit. But it’s also very of its moment: Lou and Edward, the couple who get stranded, are living together, but he is married to someone else, a detail that serves to add an edge of anxiety to proceedings. Edward goes for help – will he actually come back, or will Lou be left for good with Mrs Mathers and her injured and immobilised daughter Josephine? Would she mind if she was?
First published in Look at all those Roses, Cape, 1941. Collected in Collected Stories, Penguin, 2012. Available online here
