false 19631 6 Lorrie Moore made her debut in 1985 with <I>Self-Help</I>, which proved that she could write about sadness, sex, and the single girl with as much tenderness--and with considerably more wit--than almost any of her contemporaries. She followed this story collection with another, <I>Like Life</I>, as well as two fine novels, <I>Anagrams</I> and <I>Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?</I> Yet Moore's rapid-fire alternation of mirth and deep melancholy is so perfectly suited to the short form that readers will greet <I>Birds of America</I> with an audible sigh of relief--and delight. In "Willing," for example, a second-rate Hollywood starlet retreats into a first-rate depression, taking shelter in a Chicago-area Days Inn. The author's eye for the small comic detail is intact: her juice-bar-loving heroine initially drowns her sorrows in "places called I Love Juicy or Orange-U-Sweet." Yet Moore seldom satisfies herself with mere pop-cultural mockery. She's too interested in the small and large devastations of life, which her actress is experiencing in spades. "Walter leaned her against his parked car," Moore relates. "His mouth was slightly lopsided, paisley-shaped, his lips anneloid and full, and he kissed her hard. There was something numb and on hold in her. There were small dark pits of annihilation she discovered in her heart, in the loosening fist of it, and she threw herself into them, falling." Elsewhere, the author serves up a similar mixture of one-liners and contemporary grief, lamenting the death of a housecat in "Four Calling Birds, Three French Hens" and the death of a marriage in "Which Is More Than I Can Say About That." And her hilarious account of a nuclear family undergoing a meltdown in "Charades" will make you want to avoid parlor games for the rest of your natural life. <I>--James Marcus</I> 1769 1998 Birds of America: Stories total:2573|5:1063|4:984|3:417|2:88|1:21| 2573 10699 3682 331 4 3 false false Sat Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Fri Jan 25 14:17:00 -0800 2008 Sat Mar 22 15:54:25 -0700 2008
I just had a conversation with my sister about a passage in this book and feel the need to share~ because afterwards she said, "That's why we read!"

There's a lady-character in one of these stories whose boyfriend had a very clear type that she was not~ a t...more...]]> 2 3 false false Mon Apr 21 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue Jan 15 17:34:00 -0800 2008 Mon Apr 21 12:40:29 -0700 2008 more...]]> 3 2 false false Sat Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Fri Oct 05 10:14:54 -0700 2007 Sat Jul 26 16:05:18 -0700 2008 "Oh, not the raccoon story," groans Cal.
"Yes! The raccoons!" cries Eugene.
I'm sawing at my duck.
"We have raccoons ...more...]]> 3 1 false false Wed Jan 30 07:38:48 -0800 2008 Mon Feb 04 09:45:01 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 3 false false Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Thu Sep 20 08:18:33 -0700 2007 Fri Oct 19 10:22:24 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 2 false false Fri Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2006 Tue Jul 24 17:02:00 -0700 2007 Tue Jul 24 17:03:06 -0700 2007
Moore's ...more...]]> 1 1 false false Fri Apr 27 20:14:11 -0700 2007 Fri Apr 27 20:33:55 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 0 false false Wed May 20 14:03:36 -0700 2009 Mon May 25 16:28:08 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 1 false false Tue Apr 22 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue Apr 15 07:45:24 -0700 2008 Tue Apr 22 16:23:46 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 0 false false Wed Feb 25 09:14:33 -0800 2009 Wed Feb 25 09:24:01 -0800 2009 more...]]> 3 1 false false Sat May 23 11:12:46 -0700 2009 Mon May 25 11:12:47 -0700 2009
And yet--

Maybe it's just because everyone LOOOOOOOOOVES Lorrie Moore, but I found it...more...]]> 5 0 false false Sat Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed Nov 26 23:35:16 -0800 2008 Wed Nov 26 23:40:05 -0800 2008 Every story in this collection is strong, but there are a few that were simply stunning -- "People Like Them Are The Only People Here", "Terrific Mother", "Community Life", "What You Want to Do Fine". Moore is this...more...]]> 4 0 false false Sat Aug 15 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Aug 05 07:24:24 -0700 2009 Sat Aug 22 16:50:51 -0700 2009 more...]]> 2 0 false false Mon Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue Feb 24 18:06:18 -0800 2009 Tue Mar 03 13:52:09 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Aug 06 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Jul 08 23:05:56 -0700 2009 Fri Aug 07 08:38:46 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 1 false false Sun Sep 30 06:57:32 -0700 2007 Sun Sep 30 06:57:32 -0700 2007
I think Lorrie Moore's strategy is to make me do both.]]> 1 0 false false Sun Sep 20 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Sep 05 16:37:40 -0700 2009 Sun Sep 20 16:05:57 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 true false Mon Aug 31 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Aug 26 18:14:24 -0700 2009 Tue Sep 01 11:32:34 -0700 2009 1 Anagrams, Self Help, and Like Life, and Birds of America continues Moore's tradition of succinctly capturing the inner life of isolated misfits. (One starts to wonder what would happen if all of these characters ever met, until Moore settles that thought near the end of the book with "R...more...]]> 3 0 false false Mon Feb 23 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Thu Feb 26 08:03:54 -0800 2009 Thu Feb 26 08:13:53 -0800 2009 more...]]> 2 0 false false Fri Aug 08 04:23:55 -0700 2008 Fri Aug 08 04:24:06 -0700 2008 more...]]>