Westall's short fiction frequently portrays alienated characters in sometimes mysterious situations. Aunt Florrie is such a character. She has a personality that invites dislike and she is lonely; she spends Christmas, the most important family holiday, not with her son and his family but with more distant relatives. Typically, the character is placed in a moment of crisis where survival is at stake; in the case of Aunt Florrie, the character's death lays the foundation for the crisis to come. The collection The Haunting of Chas MacGill and Other Stories (1983; see separate entry, Vol. 7) probably contains the Westall stories that most closely resemble the techniques and subject matter of "Aunt Florrie." The stories in The Haunting of Chas MacGill and Other Stories mix realism and fantasy, much as "Aunt Florrie" does; in "Aunt Florrie," realism wins out, but in some of the tales in The Haunting...