A review by larryerick
Birds of America by Lorrie Moore

4.0

I can't recall the last time, if ever, I read a book and told myself I really liked the author. Not the author's writing. The author. There was something that came through the writing that told me I would really like this person. Early on in this collection of stories I thought this person doesn't like men much, but that rather quickly was dispelled. She's just quick to assess "bad character". There's a particular level and style of humor throughout nearly all the stories (even though I would not call these humorous stories.) For instance, in a story about a woman and her mother on a trip, she has the woman recall a childhood event with her father. "On one of the family road trips thirty years ago, when she and Theda had had to go to the bathroom, their father had stopped the car and told them to 'go to the bathroom in the woods.' They had wandered through the woods for twenty minutes, looking for the bathroom, before they came back out to tell him they hadn't been able to find it." In another story, she offhandedly points out, "Every third Monday, he conducted the monthly departmental meeting -- aptly named, Agnes liked to joke, since she did indeed depart mental." Yet, later in a story of a woman whose cat died, "She had already -- carefully, obediently -- stepped through all the stages of bereavement: anger, denial, bargaining, Häagen-Dazs, rage." This is just a sprinkling, and it doesn't even touch the occasional humorous banter between characters. There's always a certain level of serious truth to her humor. And yet, this author is capable of a story about a child with cancer that seems only possible coming from someone that has lived every single painful moment of it. Despite my emphasis on the humor, there is a great deal of human insight and emotional depth and breadth to these stories. If I have any complaint, it is only that on rare occasion, her characters' own confusion bleeds over to the writing.