Teenage Wasteland

First appearing in the pages of Seventeen Magazine, “Teenage Wasteland” has become one of Anne Tyler’s most widely beloved short stories—an affecting and masterful portrait of a life interrupted and a family come undone.

Daisy Coble had been a good mother, and so she was ashamed to find out from Donny’s teacher that he had been misbehaving. He was noisy, lazy, disruptive, and he was caught smoking. At night, she lay awake wondering where she had gone wrong, and how she could have failed as a parent.

Unsure of herself, Daisy follows the advice of professionals, and hires Donny a tutor with some unusual ideas to set the boy straight. But, has the gap between them grown too wide to bridge?