The Furnished Room by O.Henry

The Radio Reading Room

In this episode we feature The Furnished Room by O.Henry. In New York, a young man rents a furnished room from a woman and enquires about the room’s previous tenants. In particular, he asks the housekeeper a question he has asked of others many times before: whether a young girl, an actress with reddish gold hair and a mole near her left eyebrow, had rented a room from the woman at all. The name of the girl he seeks is Eloise Vashner. The stories of O. Henry are noted for their ironies and their surprise twists at the story’s conclusion. ‘The Furnished Room’ combines both of these elements: the surprise twist is highly ironic, since, unknown to himself, the young man – believing he has failed to locate his missing sweetheart – takes his own life in the very room in which she had taken hers. Without realizing it, he has found her, or at least the last place where she lived before her tragic death. Read by Myron Hieronymous Thomas.

(Description above By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University).