Richard Ford knows his way around a sentence. He's a great writer, but this collection left me cold. All of these stories are about adultery and the relationships it destroys or creates. Your typical character here is middle aged, successful and aloof. It doesn't make for great entertainment, but I don't think Ford is really trying to entertain. He's trying to render these sad empty adults in stark unflinching terms. Mission accomplished but I get enough of the "crushing malaise of adulthood" in my own life (minus the infidelity). I don't need to read books that have that as their theme too.