The scope of a novel and the economical techniques of the story: Katherine Anne Porter

Yes I think Old Mortality, the first of 3 novellas in the very old Modern Library Katherine Anne Porter collection "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" is a very good piece of work - though much less well known that the other pieces in the collection and though Porter is much less well known than some of her contemporaries or near contemporaries - Wharton?, Cather?, O'Connor? Welty?, McCullers? - to name several, probably because her output was very limited for many years (then, if I recall correctly, she had a surprising best seller late in life, Ship of Fools - a BOMC selection that everyone was reading in the early 60s). Old Mortality is in 3 parts: first about two young girls about 1900 learning about the exotic history of their family, particularly about the legendary Aunt Amy who was wild and flirtatious, ended up marrying young and dying young; 2nd part the two girls are now in New Orleans boarding school and their father comes to visit and they meet Aunt Amy's husband, Gabriel (?) whom they imagined as dashing and romantic and now is a ruined alcoholic, a wreck; 3rd part, the younger (?) sister now about 18 and newly married en route to Gabriel's funeral, encounters a maiden aunt on the train who gives her another side to family saga, the romance as seen by an outsider, homely and excluded - in just about 100 pages if that the novella presents a whole family saga, material that other writers could develop over 500 pages but in a sense this is all it needs - maybe not a great novella but an excellent example of the economy of the form, the scope of a novel with the shorthand techniques, the rapid cuts in time and place, more typical of the story.