Summary

In "Lineage," after suffering a neurological event, Professor Lubin spoke to her doctors in Russian telling them she was the daughter of the tsar of Russia. After she finished her tale, she told the doctors in English that her mother had been crazy when she’d told Lubin that story. By saying that the story was not true, Lubin was covering herself and her less than respectable birth. In the hallway, one doctor asked the other, who knew Russian, what the professor had been talking about. The doctor who spoke Russian said that the professor had been talking about a folk tale.

Analysis

Pearlman takes a break from her usual style to present a very different type of story. The story is told almost entirely by Professor Lubin, a patient who has had some sort of neurological attack similar to a stroke. As the...