Much less emotional than the recent film, this is above all a smooth satire of society and its attitude to (among other things) age-appropriate behaviour. Benjamin's wife, Hildegard, resents his increasingly youthful physique and conduct - after all, she married him because he was a quinquagenarian - ; he no longer desires her once she hits 40; their son insists on his schoolboy-father calling him uncle; the Yale registrar sends young Benjamin down because he looks too old; the Harvard football team dismisses him because he's grown too tiny; Baltimore society in turn admires, condemns, approves, disapproves, judging by the changing appearances.

While the film is a poignant account of the brevity of human love and happiness, this singularly dispassionate 9,000 word story would seem to be about their sheer impossibility.

I'd recommend both works, on the strength of their separate but very real merits.

And a final sentence to make this a super review. Yeah!