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Bad Characters
This book displays at their height the wit, sensibility and psychological penetration that distinguish Miss Stafford's work. There are nine stories and a novella. They range in mood from the title story, a comic portrait of a resourceful child-criminal named Lottie Jump, to "The End of a Career," an elegiac and ironic tale of the declining years of a great beauty. In "A Reasonable Facsimile" Dr. Bohrmann, a retired professor philosophy, is unexpectedly rescued from an aggressively boring young house guest. "Cops and Robbers" is a chilling story of childhood horror and lovelessness that revolves around a father's trip to the barber with his five-year-old daughter.
Several of the stories have as their common setting Miss Stafford's fiction town of Adams, Colorado—including an amusing saga of a girl's frustrated attempts to find a quiet spot to read ("A Reading Problem"), and two stories of failure ("In the Zoo") and success ("The Liberation") in the effort to escape from one's family. "Caveat Emptor" is a satire on the academic life and sub-life at the Alma Hettrick College for Girls; and in "The Captain's Gift" the sheltered and lavender-scented existence of old Mrs. Ramsey is violated by the reality of war.
The major piece in Bad Characters is "A Winter's Tale," a haunting and evocative novella set in Heidelberg just before the outbreak of the war. It is dominated by the diabolic character of Frau Professor Persis Galt. This portrait of a former Bostonian who poses as an excessively devout convert is one of Miss Stafford's most brilliant fictional creations.
This collection by Jean Stafford will be warmly welcomed by the many and devoted admirers of her novels and stories. To new readers the work of one of the best writers of our time will come as a joyful discovery.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
276 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1964
4 people are currently reading
160 people want to read
About the author
Jean Stafford
81 books94 followersJean Stafford was an American short story writer and novelist, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford in 1970.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
October 16, 2020
Re-read.
February 2, 2012
I highly recommend the title story, Bad Character. A young wretch of a girl, Emily, becomes "friends" with Lotte Jump, a sort-of female Huck Finn with a bad heart. Lotte is wonderfully creative and lively in her evil, a girl right out of Dickens. Interesting story in that Lotte is so incredibly attractive in print, but she would be an incredible pain in real life. Very funny . . . superbly written. Very talented writer.
September 14, 2025
Uneven
All I know about Jean Stafford is that she was married to prominent "New Yorker" writer/critic A. J. (Joe) Liebling. I love her wacky book about Lee Harvey Oswald's crazy mother. Oswald may or may not have killed Kennedy. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, so I don't know. He may or may not have been a committed communist. But his mother was certifiably insane; the kind of person you laugh at and then feel ashamed of yourself. "A Mother in History" is a fine read.
However, this book of ten stories (or nine and a novella, if you want to be technical) was going cheap and I decided to take the plunge. Not sorry I did, although I wasn't crazy about all of the stories. Stafford had a decidedly grim outlook on life and many of her stories (short stories being her specialty) are vague, with no beginning and no end. Not my style.
Two stories ("Bad Characters" and "A Reading Problem") about the little girl Emily Vanderpool (presumably based on Stafford as a child) are hilarious. Emily is a misfit with a genius for attracting the criminal element. The other stories about children are dark and depressing.
"In the Zoo" is about two orphaned sisters who land in the care of a despotic, neurotic old lady and suffer until she dies and they can make a break. It won an O'Henry award and I can see why, but it's still depressing. "Cops and Robbers" is about a small, pitiful child whose angry, selfish parents are using her as a pawn in their continuous feud. God knows what will become of her, but it's impossible to believe that any child could survive such a childhood without scars.
"Caveat Emptor" is an entertaining story about two young teachers who fall in love with each other and with a small, quirky, isolated town. They are thrown together because both teach at a small women's college that exists to train young women to be proper wives and mothers. The very thought of such a "Stepford Wives" institution would have driven Stafford mad.
"The Liberation" is interesting because it tells how Stafford felt about being a Westerner, born in California and raised in Colorado. Somehow I think of writers who flock to New York City to become famous as coming from New England or the Mid-west or maybe from the South. No reason why they shouldn't be Westerners, but it surprises me. Like Stafford, Shirley Jackson was a Western protestant who moved east and married a New York City Jew.
In this story, she captures the chip-on-the-shoulder attitude that many Westerners seem to have, assuming always that the sophisticated Easterners are looking down on them and ridiculing them. The young woman is the last of her generation still in Colorado and is determined to escape. The easiest way is marriage to an Easterner, but then there's a bump in the road. Will she still break free?
"A Winter's Tale" (the novella) was featured in a book of "best short novels" but I think it's dreary and boring. It's one of those vague, artsy-fartsy stories where the author seems to be saying something but I can't figure out what. The fact that it's set in pre-WWII Germany with lots of enthusiastic Nazis and "Heil, Hitlers" turns my stomach. After the war, of course, NO ONE had been a Nazi or a Hitler fan. No one. Absurd to be still fighting a war that was over before I was born, but there you are.
The young Nazis are heading to Spain to fight for Franco. I knew that idealistic Americans and English went to Spain to fight against Franco. It was a hopeless cause and many lost their lives. While Hitler and Mussolini were over-thrown, the Fascist dictator Franco was allowed to rule Spain for decades after WWII. Maybe no one thought Spain was that important. Anyway, I knew about the anti-Franco brigade, but never knew that German (and maybe Italian?) fascists were supporting him. It makes sense, but I never heard of it.
So I enjoyed four of the ten stories and plowed through the rest. Not a great percentage. Maybe it just shows that I don't appreciate fine literature. If so, it's too late to do anything about it. Thank God for the advantages of old age.
All I know about Jean Stafford is that she was married to prominent "New Yorker" writer/critic A. J. (Joe) Liebling. I love her wacky book about Lee Harvey Oswald's crazy mother. Oswald may or may not have killed Kennedy. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, so I don't know. He may or may not have been a committed communist. But his mother was certifiably insane; the kind of person you laugh at and then feel ashamed of yourself. "A Mother in History" is a fine read.
However, this book of ten stories (or nine and a novella, if you want to be technical) was going cheap and I decided to take the plunge. Not sorry I did, although I wasn't crazy about all of the stories. Stafford had a decidedly grim outlook on life and many of her stories (short stories being her specialty) are vague, with no beginning and no end. Not my style.
Two stories ("Bad Characters" and "A Reading Problem") about the little girl Emily Vanderpool (presumably based on Stafford as a child) are hilarious. Emily is a misfit with a genius for attracting the criminal element. The other stories about children are dark and depressing.
"In the Zoo" is about two orphaned sisters who land in the care of a despotic, neurotic old lady and suffer until she dies and they can make a break. It won an O'Henry award and I can see why, but it's still depressing. "Cops and Robbers" is about a small, pitiful child whose angry, selfish parents are using her as a pawn in their continuous feud. God knows what will become of her, but it's impossible to believe that any child could survive such a childhood without scars.
"Caveat Emptor" is an entertaining story about two young teachers who fall in love with each other and with a small, quirky, isolated town. They are thrown together because both teach at a small women's college that exists to train young women to be proper wives and mothers. The very thought of such a "Stepford Wives" institution would have driven Stafford mad.
"The Liberation" is interesting because it tells how Stafford felt about being a Westerner, born in California and raised in Colorado. Somehow I think of writers who flock to New York City to become famous as coming from New England or the Mid-west or maybe from the South. No reason why they shouldn't be Westerners, but it surprises me. Like Stafford, Shirley Jackson was a Western protestant who moved east and married a New York City Jew.
In this story, she captures the chip-on-the-shoulder attitude that many Westerners seem to have, assuming always that the sophisticated Easterners are looking down on them and ridiculing them. The young woman is the last of her generation still in Colorado and is determined to escape. The easiest way is marriage to an Easterner, but then there's a bump in the road. Will she still break free?
"A Winter's Tale" (the novella) was featured in a book of "best short novels" but I think it's dreary and boring. It's one of those vague, artsy-fartsy stories where the author seems to be saying something but I can't figure out what. The fact that it's set in pre-WWII Germany with lots of enthusiastic Nazis and "Heil, Hitlers" turns my stomach. After the war, of course, NO ONE had been a Nazi or a Hitler fan. No one. Absurd to be still fighting a war that was over before I was born, but there you are.
The young Nazis are heading to Spain to fight for Franco. I knew that idealistic Americans and English went to Spain to fight against Franco. It was a hopeless cause and many lost their lives. While Hitler and Mussolini were over-thrown, the Fascist dictator Franco was allowed to rule Spain for decades after WWII. Maybe no one thought Spain was that important. Anyway, I knew about the anti-Franco brigade, but never knew that German (and maybe Italian?) fascists were supporting him. It makes sense, but I never heard of it.
So I enjoyed four of the ten stories and plowed through the rest. Not a great percentage. Maybe it just shows that I don't appreciate fine literature. If so, it's too late to do anything about it. Thank God for the advantages of old age.
August 29, 2025
Bad Characters by Jean Stafford
Excellent read, 10 out of 10
The more I read stories by the wonderful Jean Stafford, the better I like them and the nearer to the top of my favorites I place the author.
The irony, humor, deep understanding and incredible talent with which Jean Stafford writes are a joy for the reader.
There are some very disturbing events, like in At the Zoo, but then that is probably part of the gift of this literary surgeon.
We can explore through her work young and old, liberated and caged, Death in The Family, crooks and old women.
This story is about two girls.
But I wonder why the name.
Emily Vanderpool and Lottie Jump do get in trouble and at least one of them can be suspected of bad behavior.
But I am not so sure if the character of any of the protagonists is really bad, in the sense that it would not change.
They are about eleven years old and they have all the time to “learn to fail (or fail to learn)”in the words of the Harvard professor Tal Ben Shahar.
Emily is upper class and a bit pretentious and unfriendly towards her brother and friends so the author is maybe serious about the title?
But she falls very quickly for the audacious manner and strange behavior of Lottie Jump, who comes from a different class.
Lottie comes from a poor family; she steals and talks in a weird, incorrect way that shocks Emily, who nevertheless is won over.
The poor girl has a very self assured, at least on the face of it- attitude and has so much courage or bad character (?) that she starts stealing.
From the Emily’s mother’s bedroom the gets a bottle of perfume, but the measure of her skills as a thief is given by the cake.
As the parents come home, the rather large cake disappears in what looks like a flash and in extraordinary way.
Emily wonders
- How is it even possible to walk around with that big cake?
The mystery is solved, when the little thief explains how she took it to the barn, where she ate all of it, which is still some achievement.
The family is upset by the missing dessert and parents scold their daughter for letting a vagrant have it.
- What did you want me to do- get knocked over by a stranger
Now that I write this I still take the title in jest, but think that the two girls did deceive a number of people.
Lottie explains her start in a life of (petty) crime, with things stolen from shops, which she calls with a red neck name.
Attracted by the novelty, the adventure and perhaps the misdemeanor involved, the decent Emily moves into a life of crime…would she?
They get into a partnership that involves shop lifting in tandem, with one covering for the other, who would do the actual “lift”.
There is no spoiler alert here, so I will stop and let you read to see what happens.
I can only say that I was surprised and even amazed from one point on, with a smile on my face.
Great story.
Excellent read, 10 out of 10
The more I read stories by the wonderful Jean Stafford, the better I like them and the nearer to the top of my favorites I place the author.
The irony, humor, deep understanding and incredible talent with which Jean Stafford writes are a joy for the reader.
There are some very disturbing events, like in At the Zoo, but then that is probably part of the gift of this literary surgeon.
We can explore through her work young and old, liberated and caged, Death in The Family, crooks and old women.
This story is about two girls.
But I wonder why the name.
Emily Vanderpool and Lottie Jump do get in trouble and at least one of them can be suspected of bad behavior.
But I am not so sure if the character of any of the protagonists is really bad, in the sense that it would not change.
They are about eleven years old and they have all the time to “learn to fail (or fail to learn)”in the words of the Harvard professor Tal Ben Shahar.
Emily is upper class and a bit pretentious and unfriendly towards her brother and friends so the author is maybe serious about the title?
But she falls very quickly for the audacious manner and strange behavior of Lottie Jump, who comes from a different class.
Lottie comes from a poor family; she steals and talks in a weird, incorrect way that shocks Emily, who nevertheless is won over.
The poor girl has a very self assured, at least on the face of it- attitude and has so much courage or bad character (?) that she starts stealing.
From the Emily’s mother’s bedroom the gets a bottle of perfume, but the measure of her skills as a thief is given by the cake.
As the parents come home, the rather large cake disappears in what looks like a flash and in extraordinary way.
Emily wonders
- How is it even possible to walk around with that big cake?
The mystery is solved, when the little thief explains how she took it to the barn, where she ate all of it, which is still some achievement.
The family is upset by the missing dessert and parents scold their daughter for letting a vagrant have it.
- What did you want me to do- get knocked over by a stranger
Now that I write this I still take the title in jest, but think that the two girls did deceive a number of people.
Lottie explains her start in a life of (petty) crime, with things stolen from shops, which she calls with a red neck name.
Attracted by the novelty, the adventure and perhaps the misdemeanor involved, the decent Emily moves into a life of crime…would she?
They get into a partnership that involves shop lifting in tandem, with one covering for the other, who would do the actual “lift”.
There is no spoiler alert here, so I will stop and let you read to see what happens.
I can only say that I was surprised and even amazed from one point on, with a smile on my face.
Great story.
July 9, 2021
5 ⭐️ Fun story! Inventive and hilarious prose gallops along like runaway ponies. I love the details of time and place: “I myself once made a ghastly slip and said something to Stella about “the five-and-dime.” The five-and-dime!” she exclaimed. “Where’d you get that kind of talk? Do you by any chance have reference to the ten-cent store?”
July 8, 2018
Great realistic fiction
April 14, 2011
This book is composed of several unique short stories, from "The End of a Career", which tells of a woman's decline from beauty, to "A Reading Problem", which describes a girl's search for the perfect spot to read a book.
The most well known out of these stories is "Bad Characters". Bad Characters is a about a girl, Emily Vanderpool, and another girl, Lottie Jump. Emily never has more than one friend at a time, and she often scares away these friends, because at time she has a strangely overcoming desire to be alone, and will say anything to be alone. This usually ends in her saying something offense which drives people away.
Emily discovers Lottie in her kitchen when Lottie is attempting to steal from their house. Due to Emily's lack of friends, she quickly believes Lottie's story when she tells her that she is there to play. They then rummage through the house and Emily basically helps Lottie steal from her own house. They become friends, with Lottie running the show, and Emily following behind. Then one day Lottie asks Emily if she has ever stolen anything, and Emily says no. Lottie takes her on one of her trips to a toy story and they plan on taking a few items. During this episode, Emily finds herself with that strange urge to be alone, and she insults Lottie right as she is shoplifting an item. They are found out, and Lottie, who looks much younger, puts the blame on Emily. Lottie gets off easy but Emily is punished by her parents and has an extremely long talk with the county judge. After that incident Emily never insults anyone the same way again.
The author, Stafford, lived a life marked with many sorrows. She lived through several marriages, alcoholism, depression, and other ailments. Stafford's personal life is visible in these stories, as you see the characters lives begin to decline. Similar to her life, many of these stories are unfortunate and sad events that don't normally end well.
The most well known out of these stories is "Bad Characters". Bad Characters is a about a girl, Emily Vanderpool, and another girl, Lottie Jump. Emily never has more than one friend at a time, and she often scares away these friends, because at time she has a strangely overcoming desire to be alone, and will say anything to be alone. This usually ends in her saying something offense which drives people away.
Emily discovers Lottie in her kitchen when Lottie is attempting to steal from their house. Due to Emily's lack of friends, she quickly believes Lottie's story when she tells her that she is there to play. They then rummage through the house and Emily basically helps Lottie steal from her own house. They become friends, with Lottie running the show, and Emily following behind. Then one day Lottie asks Emily if she has ever stolen anything, and Emily says no. Lottie takes her on one of her trips to a toy story and they plan on taking a few items. During this episode, Emily finds herself with that strange urge to be alone, and she insults Lottie right as she is shoplifting an item. They are found out, and Lottie, who looks much younger, puts the blame on Emily. Lottie gets off easy but Emily is punished by her parents and has an extremely long talk with the county judge. After that incident Emily never insults anyone the same way again.
The author, Stafford, lived a life marked with many sorrows. She lived through several marriages, alcoholism, depression, and other ailments. Stafford's personal life is visible in these stories, as you see the characters lives begin to decline. Similar to her life, many of these stories are unfortunate and sad events that don't normally end well.
December 20, 2012
How do you review Jean Stafford?
I don't know.
There is no good review meaty enough to satisfy the bloodlust her letters
deposit in traces throughout the network of tubes feeding your heart, that
organ of hallowed antiquity that lay flayed, splayed out on the cork board
and pinned to the mat. You love to hate her bad characters, you feel sym-
pathetic for the poor, helpless good.
These aren't victims suffering at the devices of those who will go the extra mile.
These are a collection of whimpering honorary mentions, these are broken and
cracked creatures exposed to Your microscope. Beasts have hearts here.
Jean Stafford placed the knife in my hands, and snickered in her tomb, as I shivered
at the thought. Glasses down, make the first incision slowly. Better wear an apron.
Her instructions are clear. Be merciless.
I don't know.
There is no good review meaty enough to satisfy the bloodlust her letters
deposit in traces throughout the network of tubes feeding your heart, that
organ of hallowed antiquity that lay flayed, splayed out on the cork board
and pinned to the mat. You love to hate her bad characters, you feel sym-
pathetic for the poor, helpless good.
These aren't victims suffering at the devices of those who will go the extra mile.
These are a collection of whimpering honorary mentions, these are broken and
cracked creatures exposed to Your microscope. Beasts have hearts here.
Jean Stafford placed the knife in my hands, and snickered in her tomb, as I shivered
at the thought. Glasses down, make the first incision slowly. Better wear an apron.
Her instructions are clear. Be merciless.
September 13, 2013
favorite story that my dad read to me when i was young.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews