What's striking about this collection of sixteen stories is that they are all about women: old and young, mothers, sweethearts, and daughters in the hamlets of Michigan. They are on the verge of making life's most important decisions, invariably about the men they mean the most to and about the animals they observe, identify with, and learn lessons in life from: opossums, squirrels, cats and dogs, a forlorn pony, bats and gorillas, mallards and wild swans. (And, too, there are the trucks, the accoutrements of farm life, waiting at the circumference, either on blocks or axle-deep in mud, always missing some essential part). The animals, like the main players in some of Kafka's beast stories, share the burden of life's lethargies and cruelties.

Select Fiction, Volume 8 #2



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