Called "daylight gothic" by Mark Shorer [in his introduction to Capote's Selected Writings, "Children on Their Birthdays"] contains none of the dark gothic paraphernalia of such stories as "The Headless Hawk" or "Shut a Final Door."… Shorer describes the mood of the story as "buoyant summer rain shot through with sun," but quotes out of context: "Since Monday it has been raining buoyant summer rain shot through with sun, but dark at night and full of sound, full of dripping leaves, watery chimneys, sleepless scuttlings."… The mood of the story is a balance between sun and darkness, buoyant summer rain and sleepless scuttlings. It is gothic in the sense that Lolita is gothic; both have that delicate balance of nostalgia and terror, accuracy and imagination that Leslie Fiedler considers so important in Huckleberry Finn. What Lolita and "Children" share is a moving, affectionate comedy that is also brutal...