Joy

February 15, 2019
In this poignant and sweeping collection of short stories, McGraw (Better Food for a Better World, 2013) paints a beautiful and multifaceted portrait of domestic life in modern America. In stories ranging in length from three to eight pages, McGraw explores marriage, parenting, loss, and addiction with care and a keen ability to shade character. Some of the stories exist in the same universe, with familiar recurring characters and a peek at situations from every possible angle. The stories find humanity in every situation, no matter how unsympathetic. Readers will find themselves understanding adulterers and murderers, not for their destructive choices but for the greater sum of their lives?an impressive feat, considering the brevity of the format. Standouts from the collection include a story about a white girl cast as a Puerto Rican in a high-school production of West Side Story and a vignette about a wedding-dress designer seeing an influx of single brides commissioning gowns. Perfect for fans of Celeste Ng's Little Fires Everywhere (2017) and Julie Buntin's Marlena (2017).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

Starred review from December 1, 2018
How can stories this brief be so satisfying?The travails of Patsy Cline's personal assistant and those of Ava Gardner on a rare visit to her hometown. Of a chorus member in a high school production of West Side Story, a bridal store clerk, a rapist's daughter, a self-pitying stalker. A pair of stories narrated by an accidental murderer and the mother of the child he killed; a trio that explore the relationship between a woman dying of cancer, her husband, and a not-very-close friend who has appointed herself head caretaker. A hilarious report from the drummer of an aging rock band on a reunion tour. McGraw's (Better Food for a Better World, 2013) fourth collection of stories--her seventh book--deals with the profound, the dire, the mundane, and the ridiculous, paying particular attention to relationships between parents and children, siblings, spouses, criminals and their victims. While some stories are meant purely to amuse, many are intense and beautiful. "These times come for no reason and too rarely, days and evenings that quiver like a bee's wing": So begins the title story, which deals with the possibility of joy after everything one loves is gone, from a sister whose "pealing laughter used to unfurl all the way across the playground" to an Irish setter who knew how to lick a person's feet "from ankle to toes, until he'd licked the day away." The last story, "Prayer," is just that, a direct address to God that explores the utility of spiritual faith in helping a person resist having an affair with a married woman. "Because you created choice. Because life is an endless success of choose, choose, choose, and eventually we're going to choose wrong, and then discover you waiting at the threshold of that wrong choice....Because her husband's name is Gary, and I have never met a Gary I didn't like."Fifty-three gems that demonstrate all the things a short story can do. Wow.

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