| Title | : | The Collected Stories |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 057123934X |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780571239344 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 656 |
| Publication | : | First published May 15, 2008 |
The Collected Stories Reviews
-
An art teacher once told me to stop drawing a tree's branches, leaves and trunk and to focus on drawing the spaces between them. I really feel like this technique is akin to what Moore achieves with her precise and witty writing in this excellent collection.
From the long, thin line two bodies create as they cling to one another to the angular and disparate shapes thrown by a doomed couple going about their diverging lives, Moore, over the years, consistently draws you in to the ordinary, dreary, extraordinary and endearing worlds of relationships via a delicate and different presentation of familiar details and words.
I'm a big fan of her playful imagery, "she was trying to tease him, but it came out wrong, like a lizard with a little hat on", "Your cat looks up at you from the tub, her head cocked to one side, sweet and puzzled as a child movie star." but also feel like I actually benefit from her insight into the female experience of mother, daughter, friend, partner. I am bereft on finishing! -
I've just finished reading this gigantic collection of short stories from cover to cover! It's the best short story collection I've read so far and what I like most about it is that the characters in all the short stories are real and alive. Their personalities shine through in the way they speak. All of them have their distinct voices and it is lovely to feel that you're friends with the characters in the stories you read. Lorrie Moore really has a way with dialogues.
-
I could easily read nobody other than Lorrie Moore for the rest of my life, she is just that good. I enjoyed every single bit of this 600+page book and would have happily continued reading her forever if it had happened to be some kind of magical novel that never ended.
Moore's writing is superb. That is an understatement. As usual, what do you write about books that you love without sounding trite? Her stories are brilliant, the characters are fully fleshed out, fascinating and usually endearingly eccentric without being over-the-top. Her descriptions are subtly brilliant and she's often hilarious. So many stories, so many charactes and each one so unique and clever.
The best I can do is leave you with some examples, pieces that I underlined with hopes of sharing her brilliance with you.
And unless you see the head crowning, never look at a woman's stomach and ask if she's pregnant.
=
Soon, he was sure, there would be a study that showed that the mentally ill were actually better looking than other people. Dating proved it.
=
When Abby was a child, her mother had always repelled her a bit - the oily smell of her hair, her belly button like a worm curled in a pit, the sanitary napkins in the bathroom wastebasket, horrid as a war, then later strewn along the curb by raccoons who would tear them from the trash cans at night. Once at a restaurant, when she was little, Abby had burst into an unlatched ladies' room stall, only to find her mother sitting there in a dazed and unseemly way, peering out from her toilet seat like a cuckoo in a clock.
=
The trick to flying safe, Zoe always said, was never to buy a discount ticket and to tell yourself you had nothing to live for anyway, so that when the plane crashed it was no big deal. Then. when it didn't crash, when you had succeeded in keeping it aloft with your own worthlessness, all you had to do was stagger off, locate your luggage and, by the time a cab arrived, come up with a persuasive reason to go on living.
=
Along the damp path through the cave there were lights, which allowed you to see walls marbled a golden rose, like a port cheddar; nippled projections, blind galleries, arteries all through the place, chalky and d& stalagmites and stalactites in walrusy verticals, bursting up from the floor in yearing or hanging wicklessly in drips from the ceeiling, making their way, through time, to the floor. The whole cave was in a weep, everything wet and slippery; still, ocher pools of water bordered the walk, which spiraled gradually down.
=
His lips were smooth and thick and hung open like a change purse.
=
This is why I was pleased. The lump was not simply a focal point for my self-pity; it was also a battery propelling me, strengthening me- my very own appointment with death. It anchored and deepened me like a secret. I started to feel it when I walked, just out from under my armpit - hard, achy evidence that I was truly a knotted saint, a bleeding angel. At last it had been confirmed: my life was really as difficult as I had always suspected.
=
It entailed what Eleanor called, "The Great White Whine"; whiney white people getting together over white wine and whining.
=
"Why are we supposed to be with men anyway? I feel like I used to know"
"We need them for their Phillips-head screwdrivers," I said
Eleanor raised her eyebrows, "That's right," she said, "I keep forgetting you only go out with circumsized men."
There was one story about a mother and father whose child had cancer and their hospital experience while the child was in treatment. I don't know whether it's because I have children of my own, or whether it's my PTSD because of a traumatic hospital experience I had, or whether it's because Moore's writing is just insanely brilliant - but the story hit me hard, right in the gut and because I had read it in the morning, I spent the entire day an emotional wreck.
I wouldn't hesitate in recommending Moore. If you're a fan of short stories, this will be an orgasmic delight. If you're not a fan of short stories, Moore will win you over. -
Simply the best. I could read her forever. the way she mixes humour with pain. You laugh out loud and then she shoots an arrow through your heart. Lorrie Moore, the master of the short story
-
Like Life is my favourite of the books, because it was the first Moore I read.
Self Help is second favourite.
Birds of America and Anagrams are 3* ties. -
Me encanta Lorrie Moore y cada una de sus novelas me ha maravillado con su vulnerabilidad, espontaneidad y humor.
Aunque esta vez, esa magia desapareció por completo y no porque Moore fuese mejor novelista que cuentista, sino porque la traducción, de la edición de “Cuentos completos” de Seix Barral, es un verdadero DESASTRE.
En anteriores lecturas, me impresioné de las increíbles traducciones al español que supieron, tan bien, entender y sentir la escritura de la autora. Tanto Cecilia Pavón como Inés Garland, en “Anagramas” y “Quién se hará cargo del hospital de ranas” son unas increíbles portadoras del lenguaje, tan peculiar y sencillo, de la autora. Traducciones fluidas y modernas, que no se comparan a la de “Cuentos completos” carente, en sus casi mil paginas, de fluidez, calidez y dominio.
Podría escribir muchos párrafos más sobre las faltas de ortografía y errores de edición, pero me quedo con las lecturas de antaño, esas que me hicieron encantarme de la autora. No lo recomiendo, además ... es un libro bastante caro. -
Una joya del todo imprescindible
-
This book goes backwards. It starts with Moore's most recent stories and then works backwards to 1988 to her first collection. There's no introduction to explain this decision, or tell us anything about Ms Moore: we're straight into "Foes", a quirky tale of a literary dinner, featuring a sweet but careworn middle aged couple and the difficulty of meeting people; the importance of holding back judgement even on those we don't like. All of Moore's characters are pretty similar: liberals exiled from New York, female friends, couples who are about to split, couples with in-jokes and nicknames (Brocko = Obama), couples who quip. So much quipping.
“Do you think people can be rehabilitated?”
“Sure! Look at Ollie North”.
“Dinner and a movie and sex is not my idea of a relationship.”
“Maybe we could eliminate the movie?”
“The United States, how can you live in that country?”
“A lot of my stuff is there.”
“She had already stepped through the stages of bereavement: anger, denial, bargaining, Haagen Daazs.”
And lots of self-mocking humour:
“She had to get new friends. She would go to conferences and meet more people.”
“[She was] part Shelley Winters, part potato.”
“Sometimes she thought she was just trying to have fun in life, and other times she realised she must be terribly confused.”
There are 37 stories, but as they are mostly set in the same world, it's easy to think that you are reading a novel about 37 different protagonists, who interact with each other off-page; I imagine that these midwest miserably married people meet at the drugstore or the laundromat. Indeed, one collection of four short stories features three revolving characters, Benna, Gerard and Eleanor who play different characters, sometimes in love, sometimes not, their lives echoing their doppelganger's in the next story, whether they be aerobics teacher, lawyer or cancer patient.
I've never read Carver, Cheever, Roth or Updike, but I imagine that they write similarly small lives in the middle of nowhere but with more misogyny; as one of Moore's character says: “I know the difference between feminism and a Sadie Hawkins dance.” Not every married couple is heterosexual, "What You Want Fine" features a blind, gay, Jewish lawyer on a roadtrip to historical sites with his boyfriend. There is even more quipping:
“Is there life on Mars? It think the answer is yes. They are sure there are ice crystals. Where there is ice, there is water, and where there is water, there is waterfront property. And where there is waterfront property, there are Jews!”
The reader goes backwards in time away from marriages to ironic and maudlin girls stuck out in the chirpy, cheerful boondicks with their mother issues (“When she was younger, she was a mean, frustrated mother and is pleased when her children act as if they don't remember”) who are nonetheless witty and, yes, quippy. (“I feel like I've got five years to live, so I'm moving back to Iowa so that it'll feel like fifty.”) We go further back to childhood, with more of the same bookish introverts, unhappy parents, humour to take away the sting of misery. It's a counselling session in 650 pages. -
Stories from: Self Help (1985), Like Life (1990), a personal favorite: Birds of America (1998). Also some selections from Anagrams (1986) and some stories that will eventually appear in Bark (2014)
-
Rereading most of the stories, I realize that my sense of humor might have derived from reading Lorrie Moore in my early twenties.
-
A review somewhere summarised Lorrie Moore characters as: “Poetry-loving, cat-owning, musical-comedy enthusiast with gift for wordplay seeks conventional man to baffle with puns."
-
Lauren Groff writing in the NYRB : “Her characters put their humor to a wide variety of uses: to try to smooth over awkwardness, to defang their terror, to stave off despair, to endear themselves to lovers they sense are drawing away, to armor themselves against the aggressions of others, to put up a brave front when it seems that everything around them is caving in, to gesture helplessly at the absurdity of the world.”
-
Indeed, there’s a lot of jokes and clever wordplays. And lost, sad, funny interesting people. My kind of people
-
Some people find her stories too punny.
In one of her earlier stories, a character, confined in a mental health facility, exclaimed: “This danish is too sweetish for me to finish.” In another story, a character on a phone call, nervous and “aiming for hilarity” says: “Give to seizure what is seizure’s.” If you don’t like these, then Lorrie Moore is not for you.
-
If you like her though, there’s a 98.4% chance that I’ll like you.
-
PS: I promised an ex-girlfriend, who also loves Lorrie Moore, that should I do drag someday, my drag name will be “Faint Hearted” -
I really, really really wanted to love this book: It swept through Channel 4 like a plague a few years ago, and I now find myself ahead of the curve in my new office. Having *finally* got around to read it, I have to say I'm conflicted.
The best thing you can do is to pick at random any one of her tales illuminating worn-at-the-edges lives, febrile crises and the daily battle against an implacable 'other'. Do that and you will not be disappointed as you wallow in the mesmeric artistry of her story-telling, the immediacy of her characterisation, her visceral understanding of the disappointments of life and even more wonderfully, as
the great Louise Brown points out, her vivid imagery.
However, the very worst thing you could do is read the whole thing cover-to-cover, as I did. That way madness lies as you're hit over the head by a relentless catalogue of Moore's foibles, turns of phrase and idiom, all of which suck the joy and surprise out of each individual vignette the further you go. Cancer follows cancer, drooping Mid-West town follows drooping Mid-West town, populated by dysfunctional family after family. I never knew the US had some many aspiring poets.
Definitely one to dip in and out of, although on the upside it has massively boosted my Total Pages in this year's GoodReads challenge! -
My favourite short story writer, so utterly brilliant at blending the tragic and comic in life in a way that feels so true. And she makes it look effortless. It's easy to think that her stories are simple but that would be to miss the point of what she writes; the revelations contained in every story about how challenging, awful, exhilarating, poignant and messy living is. How it is always open-ended and never neat. She's a master of her craft and I will always return to these stories. I enjoyed this re-read of them immensely.
-
I mean. Fucking hell.
-
This generous volume of Moore stories mostly pulls from previous collections. It opens with 4 (quite wonderful) stories that were published more recently. What the volume ultimately shows is that Moore is a writer who got better over time.
Already talented from the start, Moore began to markedly improve once she embraced the idea of challenging herself in terms of subject matter (esp. when she really seemed to be going out of her comfort zone). To be specific, though I have always liked her work, I would - with some of her earlier stories - feel distanced when I found myself reading yet one more story that was more or less about a man and woman who were clearly mismatched and eventually broke up.
I noticed Moore years ago when I would come across a story of hers in The New Yorker. That led to a reading of her novel 'A Gate at the Stairs' and one of her short story volumes, 'Self-Help' (which I have already reviewed here so I didn't re-read those stories again in 'The Collected Stories').
Though I was quite easily captured by the first half of 'TCS', I did start to notice in the latter half that, yes, she did still manage to hold me more or less but, more importantly, her eventual growth as a storyteller is what stayed with me most.
In 'TCS', Moore gains particular strength when, for example, she explores the mother-daughter dynamic during a trip to Ireland ('Which Is More Than I Can Say About Some People'), the disillusionment gradually felt by a young librarian originally from Transylvania ('Community Life'), and the heart-wrenching experience of parents faced with their child having a rare tumor ('People Like That Are the Only People Here')
In an especially surprising move, Moore has written the 'antidote' to Annie Proulx's 'Brokeback Mountain' (written around the same time). In 'What You Want to Do Fine', a blind gay man and a (basically) straight guy fall into each other's lives and arms with relatively little angst. It's my favorite story in 'TCS'.
I don't want to downplay the truth that Moore is among the breeziest of short story writers. She's forever catching the reader off-guard with humor and refreshing insight (even if / when a particular story isn't her best work).
I may not re-read this entire volume. It's a bit time-consuming. But there are certainly decided gems I will want to revisit. -
950 páginas de una autora prácticamente desconocida me han acompañado durante horas y horas largas de camino al aeropuerto, también en el avión y a la vuelta del trabajo. Si un acto se convierte en hábito a los veintiún días, entonces este libro ha sido una rutina para mí. Lo voy a echar de menos, creo.
«Perder la confianza era más violento que perder el amor. Perder el amor era una muerte lenta, pero perder la confianza era un golpe rápido, un suelo que se abría de pronto y te tragaba».
«La vida no era una alegría encima de otra. Sólo era la esperanza de menos dolor, la esperanza jugada como una carta sobre otra esperanza, un deseo de amabilidad y misericordia que surgieran como reyes y reinas en un inesperado cambio de juego. Podías sujetar las cartas tú mismo o no: caían del mismo modo de todas formas. La ternura no entraba salvo de manera defectuosa y por azar». -
Lorrie Moore lo sabe hacer y tú no. Ni tú, ni casi nadie; porque conseguir que un relato se convierta en una escena cotidiana de angustia y esperanza es muy difícil, aunque leyéndola a ella parezca fácil.
Hay algo en la selección y/u orden de los relatos que no se por qué no me convence, pero eso solo le resta al libro que quizá sea algo más dinámico en su lectura, nada que reprochar a la calidad de cada uno de sus textos.
Lean a Moore, sientan el terror de lo cotidiano. -
Nueva escritora favorita.
-
3,5
Llevo prácticamente leyendo desde principios del año esta colección de cuentos de Moore, incluso llegando a haber meses en que no leía nada. Con la aproximación del fin de año he decidido ponerme las pilas estos últimos días y terminar los pocos cuentos que me faltaban. Esta es mi primera introducción a la escritora y por más que haya algunos cuentos que me han impresionado, en su mayoría no me han llegado a llamar la atención. Su estilo de escritura y la temática de sus historias no me ha cautivado, una pena, ya que los cuentos son un género literario que particularmente me encanta.
Estos son los cuentos que me han gustado, una cantidad lamentablemente pequeña:
- Irme de esta manera
- Como hacerse escritora
- Llenar
- Sitios donde buscar la cabeza
- Gracias por la compañía -
Mi escritora favorita, lejos. Su estilo es enorme, su humor. Quisiera ser bilingüe para leerla en inglés sin tener que recurrir al diccionario cada diez palabras.
-
These amiable stories probably work well read aloud by the author to small groups at workshops or bookstore cafes, where the idea is leaving everyone smiling and feeling no smarter or dumber than anyone else. Don't get me wrong. The glue of social cohesion is sometimes just what the doctor, or carpenter, ordered. Far be it from me...
-
Only 3 new stories in this U.K. edition (previously published in the New Yorker), but worth it. I couldn't help but reread the old ones too.
-
If I had to keep only one book for the rest of my life, it would be this one. Granted, it's cheating, since it contains multiple volumes in one. But it's that excellent.
-
I became aware of the legend of Lorrie Moore after reading extremely positive reviews in The Guardian in 2016. I really engaged with the idea of a great woman writer from America, whose writing was the best short fiction since Carver...who everyone says is the best short story writer since Chekhov. So, I read the free short stories available on the internet. One of these, a recent work, had been published not that long ago, when, with respect, Moore was old, in a magazine; it concerned an elderly couple going to a gala dinner of some kind. The story depressed me quite a bit - maybe it was intended to. Moore inclines towards depressing observations anyway - and on top of this old people make depressing subject matter for books, IMO. I say this though I am now firmly middle aged.
I believe that when we read we want to take the part of the hero/ine, often in a love story, sometimes an adventure etc, we want to root for our hero, we hope that things will work out: IMO things cannot work out for an old person. It's unfortunate, and sounds terrible to say so, but the good part of their life is over, they usually have nothing good (not compared to a young person with things to hope for) to hope for ergo they do not make empathetic heroes for books. This sounds ridiculous, but I find true: I hated Love in the Time of Cholera, for the reasons mentioned - it's about eighty year olds who find love. There are certain specific situations in which an old person might hope e.g. for relief of pain; aspirations for their children or grandchildren; but these do not compare to the kind of relatively fantastic hopes of a younger person e.g. love realised; a fortune to furnish the rest of their lives, which are still rich with potential (e.g. young enough to buy themselves a wife/husband, have children and enjoy it); some sort of task or adventure successfully completed etc.
The conclusion of a story about a young person is endowed with hope, because it is full of life - the expectation of a life after the book ends. If the hero/ine dies, the story becomes tragic, and again can be highly satisfying - the tragedy, say Romeo & Juliet, is intense because these young people were cut off brutally in their youth, with everything to hope for and expect in a long life. There is nothing tragic, by contrast, or not that much, with an 80-year old being wiped out on a pedestrian crossing by a speeding car. Of course that 80-year old very likely has children, and grandchildren, who are likely to be heartbroken - but their heartbreak is really about 'attachment', a sort of addiction in the opinion of the Tibetan guru Rinpoche, a difficulty in letting go; or in other words the heartbreak is really OUR thing, rather than the 80-year olds. Because to misquote Anna Freud, who said she couldn't honestly say her child analysand who had committed suicide had made a mistake, we can't honestly say an 80-year old being suddenly terminated is a shame - certainly not a tragedy. Most people, at least when they are younger, imagine they WANT to die suddenly and without pain. This changes as we near our three score years and ten of course, or 80 in today's money; but does that have more to do with fear of death, than with love of octogenarian life? Enough about this; the death of an 80-year old is not strictly tragic, in the Aristotelian sense of the word.
So, that ruled out the recent Moore stories for me, written as an elderly writer. I didn't want to depress myself anew. This book is arranged chronologically, the most recent first. Surely the order should be reversed, her oldest first. That would (a) follow the natural history of her life, the same way that, say, biographies, are ordered (b) expose readers to what I assume is her best work first; I'm not a Moore expert of course, but almost all writers do their best work first, which is superadded to my objections to an old person writing about old people, listed above. I suppose the order is a bit like bands that play their less popular new material first at a gig, or place them first on an album, to force their fans to listen to them before they get the songs they want.
I flicked through the book therefore, to the last section, which dealt with what I assumed to be her best work. I read 'Yard Sale' and one other. I began to realise that Moore is a slightly cynical, slightly bitter writer, either old before her time, or someone who could sense the old person in herself, all of us, even before we get old. I have a lot of time for this sort of attitude, these sort of feelings; they're feelings I often have, and have always had myself. I don't really enjoy reading them written though, or not her writing. Saying this I really enjoy the writing of Morrissey - is it because he is young when he wrote, and his writings - 'Never Had No one Ever', 'Girlfriend in a Coma' - have the implied and inherent falsity of a young person writing on universal, mortal themes; or in other words, he had plenty of time to have someone ever, he had plenty of time to get another girlfriend. How much joy would we derive from a song called 'Girlfriend in a Coma' that was written by an 80-year old?
I also like the bitter poetry of Philip Larkin though he flirts closer to the depressing aspect - because of what I imagine to be his circumstances - than, say, Morrissey. One shouldn't judge the art by the artist of course, but I find it impossible to separate the whimsical, faux-melancholy of his songs with the image of the beautiful, young Morrissey, whose life surely held great joy, prancing around the stage. Larkin by contrast I imagine had quite a sad life, and I am therefore more frightened by his poetry. And most importantly, I suppose, it is because music has a beauty, that lifts us out of ourselves, regardless of an accompanying song's lyrics.
Some art, painting for example, often contains an inherent paradox: the art of Francis Bacon for example seems to be about pain, sometimes a sort of torture, agony, and yet his works are these designed, composed, aesthetically delightful pieces, considered from an abstract perspective. If we choose to express ugly subject matter, should we, to be authentic, make ugly work? Most artists do not choose this way. If Moore's work, maybe any fabulist, tale teller's work, could be experienced from an abstract perspective, I would not be so consumed by the content. But this is the lot of the novelist and short story writer. If she had devoted her output to poetry I think I would have found her gift for observation, on universal and usually sad realities of life, potent and memorable. I DO find her work this way, I just don't like reading it. She's really strong on observation; in isolation they make lovely, sometimes lyrical aperçus. I would probably enjoy her work...Moore..as poetry, with a less narrative, more timeless quality.
So, my unqualified observations, based little on literary merit, almost entirely on personal taste, hang-ups and fears. Should I be reviewing based on some other criteria? I'm not a Harry Potter or fantasy fan, my preference is for literary fiction. But I won't be reading any more from the thick collected works of Lorrie Moore, although the book will go proudly in my bookshelves, in case single women or other people that I want to impress are inspecting my library, and I want to appear in touch with my feminine side. -
"Aunque Kit y Rafe se habían conocido en el movimiento pacifista, manifestándose, organizando, haciendo carteles contra la energía nuclear, ahora querían matarse. También se habían vuelto un poco partidarios de la energía nuclear".
"No había predadores naturales en aquella comunidad pequeña, distraída y tolerante, y por tanto abundaban las criaturas y las creaciones extrañas".
"Mantén relaciones de vez en cuando con hombres estúpidos, absurdos, que te dicen que te dejes en pelo hasta la cintura y que, cuando estés triste, te hagan cosquillas para animarte".
"Una persona era una colección de accidentes. Una persona era un montón infinito de rocas con cosas creciendo por debajo".
"Los murciélagos poseen curiosidad y arrogancia. Son pequeños científicos sociales".
"La furia lo cercó y se instaló en él, como un solo de saxofón".
"Él nunca había estado en California, y en los últimos diez años solo en una ocasión (cuando fue a visitar a los padres de Breck a Minnesota) había estado en una casa preciosa".
"Sabía que la vida solo ofrece pequeñas alegrías -cuando las alcanzas, las grandes son demasiado complicadas para ser alegrías-, y cuando uno se da cuenta de eso, la presión disminuye considerablemente".
"Se imaginaba Italia como Florida, todo luz y color, pero con alguna ruina gloriosa repartida aquí y allá, y enormes hombres de piedra sin ropa aunque con palomas encantadoras en la cabeza. Quizá hubiera teatros".
"Yo tengo pesadillas desconcertantes relacionadas con cortes de pelo horribles y con que estoy en una fiesta y no conozco a nadie". -
I am rating this collection five stars because I am making my way slowly, a day at a time, through the devastating "People . . . Peed Onk" in David Sedaris's collection, and know I need to read more of Moore's work. I won't read critical pieces on the story until I've finished it, because the experience is so fearful, so halting--I read almost between my fingers because I cannot bear to go on . . .
-
two stars is meant to signify 'it was ok'. And it was ok - just not the box of fireworks I was expecting. One of the stories has two and half pages of HaHaHaHaHaHa. Nothing else. (Sorry about the spoiler). I'm not a fan of 'tricks'. The blurb on the back cover says 'the nearest thing we have to Chekhov'. That needs to be held up as a shining example of hyperbole - and a good reason NEVER to read the blurb on any book.
-
Reading this one has been a trip! I started trying to predict/analyze each story before I read it with a Tarot layout, to quite interesting results, but that proved too draining and slow for a book I wanted to just gulp down. The stories here are beautiful, and sad, with funny moments. Love and loss and a sense of humour are the only surviving things, and sometimes a sense of beauty too. I wish I could write stories like these.
-
Actually this wasn't the book I read. I read (listened to) Bark, which is also one of her story collections, and she narrates it herself. As with all story collections, it's uneven. Some are great and very memorable and some have already slipped away. But there's great writing in all.
-
In spite of how well written these tories are, I wasn't able to make a strong connection with them, as though I were observing without being immersed in them. Perhaps the author didn't have the likes of me in mind when they were written. Fair enough.
-
Thoughtful, intentional lines and funny plots. A collection of little stories that make you think. I picked it up when I needed a breather from seemingly never-ending panini (read: pandemic) life, and I am thankful to have had Lorrie Moore's with me on my journey.
