false 3 0 false false Mon Aug 31 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Aug 25 17:05:28 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 31 20:24:29 -0700 2009
On the title page is what seems to be a stamp mark from a used book store in Kho Tao, Thailand. There is probably a good story there for Meg to tell in comments.

I'm not the most practiced short story reader, with only medium Lorrie Moore exposure. In high school I got a copy of Birds of America at the Seminary Co-op Bookstore in Chicago, because I liked the stickers on the cover and because that store always made me feel more literary than I was really going to be. I didn't finish the book. I did really like a New Yorker story a few years later, though.

I was a little disappointed with these, but it was good to try again. 4 stars for the one about the playwright and for the one about the history professor, 2.5 stars for everything else. Both of those great ones take place (at least partly) in NYC, which I didn't expect, and they do strike a chord. Strange to read stories set in Wisconsin malls/Times Square streets I am equally familiar with.

I was totally surprised by the semi sci-fi element of the title story. I can't say I truly liked it, though. It reminded me of what worked so well in the Meg Rosoff book How I Live Now, its showing and not telling the impact of an alternate-history war the reader won't understand. This one didn't feel so elegant or even necessary, and it sticks out kind of weirdly from the totally normal naturalism of every other story I'm aware that she writes.]]>