**A beautiful hardcover edition of the collected stories of one of
America's most revered and admired authors--originally published in the
acclaimed collections Self-Help, Like Life, Birds of America, and
Bark and including three additional stories excerpted from her
novels.
**
Moore is one of America's most revered writers, and this career-spanning
collection showcases her exceptional talent for leavening tragedy with
humor, for blending sorrow with subversive wit. Her keenly observed
stories are peopled by a variety of lost souls--husbands, wives, lovers,
tourists, professors, students, even a ghost--who are often grappling
with pain or disappointment: a divorced man obsessed with self-help
books, a washed-up Hollywood actress living in a hotel, a woman with a
terminal illness.
But however lovelorn or dislocated the characters--from the wisecracking
wedding guest in "Thank You for Having Me" to the self-deluded musicians
in "Wings" to the complicated parent-child pairs in "How to Talk to Your
Mother (Notes)" and "The Kid's Guide to Divorce"--their stories are
always grounded in insight and compassion. Moore's portraits of the
parents of a seriously ill child in "People Like That Are the Only
People Here" and of a woman haunted by guilt over the death of her
friend's baby in "Terrific Mother" achieve a notably unsentimental and
yet quietly devastating power.
Whether moving or darkly funny, all of these pieces channel the
messiness of the human condition through Moore's characteristically
knowing, wry voice, and together they confirm her as a master of the
short story.
