This is a volume of stories, a couple of them longer than the others, all taking place in California, around San Francisco.

The two stories that center on one’s offspring were especially touching for me. “Molten” is the story of a mother’s grief and her breaking down after the death of her teenage son. “Her Firstborn” is the story of an expectant couple where the father is haunted by and grieves for his wife’s earlier first-born child who died as an infant.

Jump is the story of a thin Hispanic twenty-two-year-old Alejandro who helps Carolee, the shift manager at Copy Copy when she has car trouble. While Dwell Time is the story of a marriage, well-adjusted at first sight but hiding its demons well.

Walk for Mankind takes place during the Watergate on the grounds of the Stanford campus about two different families and the relationship between their children, Richard Appleby and Sasha Horowitz. This long story has ties to the final story, “Things Said or Done,” which takes place thirty-five years later when Richard is fifty and Sasha is a grown woman and has little memory of the past.

In fact, most stories are about people, relationships, and families, as is the story that has given its title to the collection, a wife struggling with the loss of her husband. In short, all stories are character driven and written well with a good command of the language. Yet, they weren’t all that special for me to be excited about, literary though they may be.

noticing that some excellent novel writers may not be able to write short stories just as successfully.

the general dullness that seemed to exude from these stories, except maybe sections in them.

is Ann Packer.

I neither recommend nor not recommend this book Although expertly written with different premises, I found them boring although the literary is my favorite genre.

This book and especially its published reviews are good for seeing how much applause a good novel writer's short stories get, even though the stories cannot compete with her novels.

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Created Jul 15, 2018 at 5:21pm • Submit your own review...