The short story "Family Ties" was first published in 1952 in a collection of Lispector's stories called Alguns contos (Stories), but it did not receive much notice. Eight years later, in 1960, Lispector republished the story in Lacos de familia (Family Ties), along with other pieces, some already published and some new, all about family relationships. This time, her collection was reviewed favorably. In Luso-Brazilian Review, Rita Herman called Lacos de familia "a personal interpretation of some of the most pressing psychological problems of man in the contemporary western world. Liberty, despair, solitude, the incapacity to communicate, are the main themes that unite the separate stories into a definite configuration of the author's pessimistic perception of life." However, since the book, like all of Lispector's original writings, was written in Portuguese, her audience was quite limited. A new translation into English by Giovanni Pontiero, Family Ties (1972), launched the...