O Careless Love: Stories and a Novella

by Susan Dodd

Settings ranging from a desolate island in winter to a broken-down city bus at rush hour are the locale for love's unlikely -- and often inconvenient -- landings in these ten diverse and uncommon stones. An eccentric endodontist repairs a patient's freshly broken heart while performing a root canal. A Haitian woman charms snakes into keeping her company in an urban cave as she safeguards her grandchildren's sleep. A shy illustrator subsists through a long Vermont winter on occasional glimpses of a man in a blue pick-up truck. Whether Dodd's characters are on the lookout or on the lam, love is what maps their migrations. An enduring species, they scavenge wherever scraps of hope may be found. The sound of their yearnings, muted and distinct, will linger in the reader's heart.

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Cathy · Rating 2 out of 5]

It took me a while to trudge through this book of short stories and a novella full of misfits and miscreants. I am annoyed these days by books in which writers are too much in love with their own writing. Too much cleverness and metaphoric madness to suit me. Besides that, I could hardly relate at all to any of the characters. Give me a book of ordinary people any day.

These characters are looking for love in all the wrong places. Suffice it to say their efforts are ill-spent. Why don't I learn to stop reading when I don't enjoy a book?

[Bernadette · Rating 3 out of 5]

In her collection O Careless Love: Stories and a Novella, Susan Dodd presents a range of lovelorn misfits in search of emotional direction in their lives. At times painful to behold, Dodd’s characters stumble, fall, pick themselves back up again and try to continue on, despite obstacles that are often of their own making.

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