Marjorie's World of Books

I don’t often choose the short story format in books but something about this one interested me.  What I particularly liked about this book is that the stories are all woven together and include many of the same characters, all neighbors in Wequaquet.  In one story, you’ll read about a man telling his own story and then in another story, his mother or his old girlfriend will be telling their story, which of course includes him.  So you get different perspectives from different people about the same characters.

I’m not going to review each story because that would be like reviewing each chapter of a book since this is really one story about the people in Wequaquet.  The stories aren’t in consecutive order and do jump around in time.  The author writes very realistically and some of the stories are everyday type of happenings, but even those stories have an edge to them.  Some of the stories are disturbing and some will touch your heart.  There were a couple where I had to sit awhile after reading them, just giving them a bit more thought before moving on to the next one.

I think my favorite story was of the father driving his young son to his first date at a skating rink.  There were so many insights into the father’s fears and longings for his son and his love for the boy was so touching.  There were also a couple of stories that were a bit too crass for me and because of that, they didn’t have anything particular to say to me.  As a whole, the book kept my interest and I did find some very powerful literary moments in this collection of short stories.

I won this book from the publisher through LibraryThing and have been asked to give an honest review.