A celestial overseer observes--and is continually confounded by--a young woman's path into adulthood in this uncanny and darkly humorous novel, unpublished until now and accompanied by a selection of the author's stories. Susan Taubes's novella 'Lament for Julia' is the story of a young woman coming of age in the twentieth century as seen through the eyes of a sexless spirit who supposes himself to be charged with her oversight. What is this spirit? An operator from on high (though hardly holy), a narrative I, and a guiding presence that is more than a bit of a voyeur, who remains entirely unknown to Julia herself. About her, the spirit knows both a good deal and very little, since Julia's emotional and physical and sexual being are all baffling, if also fascinating, to an entity that is pure mind. The I and Julia are a mismatched couple, set up for failure from the start, it seems, even if they do somehow manage to deal in their different ways with childhood and Mother and Father