While the po-mo "it's-all-fiction" elements of this book rubbed me the wrong way (no pun intended), I enjoyed many of the contributions in this anthology. The essays/memoirs/short stories from Bernard Cooper, Junot Diaz, Marcia Douglas, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Lynda Shor are particularly strong. Julia Frey's essay-in-footnotes on her late husband's short story, inspired by a vacation in Bali, is fascinating. The short story itself is tiresome. Hey, rich gringos, you don't need to tel More...

This anthology explores the territory between non-fiction and fiction, including short stories and autobiographical essays and mixes of the the two. As someone who likes non-fiction to be factual, I wasn't so sure about this concept, but the author commentary on each piece helped out greatly in shining a light on what was true (as the author saw it) and what was fictionalized. A couple commentaries did stray too far into high falutin' academic analysis for my taste, so I skimmed those.