On the Couch: Great American Stories about TherapyPaperback, 4 February 1999

The therapist's office remains one of the few private places in our world. On the Couch, a scintillating collection of contemporary American short stories, provides nineteen separate windows onto this intensely private experience, from the heroine in Lorrie Moore's "If Only Bert Were Here, " who cannot recover from the death of her beloved cat (and who lists Haagen-Dazs as a distinct stage of mourning), to the couple in John Updike's "The Fairy Godfathers, " whose passion requires the presence of their respective therapists, to the protagonist of Stephen McCauley's "The Whole Truth, " who can, hilariously, barely keep straight the twisted lies she tells her therapist about her romantic entanglements.