A powerful collection of short stories that explores troubled relationships, unresolved grief, and other emotionally charged territory. The images in the story are often grisly and graphic: readers with tender sensibilities, be forewarned. In an author interview at the end of the book, Chaon explains his tendency to go for the image that sticks with you long after you wish it would fade away:

"To me, American life itself is often fairly haunted, uncanny, unsettling in both its large events and small details. This is a country where a town can literally dry up and disappear over the course of less than a century, where thousands of people go missing every year. It's also true that one of the commonplaces of end-of-century America is the sense that it's very easy to have a secret life."

All that said, I loved this book. The writing is incredible. (I'm about to add some of my favorite quotes from the book to the quotes database here at GoodReads.)

Note: The e-book version of this book requires a complete re-edit. There are extra spaces in the middle of words and apostrophes only appear where they are not needed. There are hundreds of errors of this type. My advice? Don't buy the e-book until some future GoodReads reviewer advises you that the text has been cleaned up completely.