Welcome to Litsy!

"Somehow all of us knew that Auntie behaved as she did because she had got way beyond being grown-up. She had grown up and up and up until she got to the very top, as high as you could go. Then she started down, and having been on the downhill side of growing for such a long time, she got right back to where we were, but with an imagination more fecund and startling than any we had ever encountered."

I picked this up about five years ago. I first borrowed it from the library as it had been out of print for about 10 years. I sadly didn't get to finish it at the time, but found a copy at a used bookstore a few weeks later. I liked the essays more than the short stories. Climbing The Tower was the best out of this selection. However, there's quite a bit of casual racism.