A review by cocoonofbooks
Lost in the City by Edward P. Jones

4.0

I'm not generally a fan of short stories — I probably wouldn't have picked this up if it hadn't been on my original TBR list I'm working through — but I was able to appropriately set my expectations to appreciate this book for what it was. For the most part, these stories don't contain plot twists or even necessarily much of a plot. They are each a brief window into the life of one or more black Americans living in Washington, D.C., together making up a tapestry showing the diversity of life within a single community. Jones has the ability to make the reader inhabit a character's bones, feeling their feelings and seeing what they see for the snapshot in time that we are with them. Although the characters sometimes make odd or destructive choices, their decisions never feel unrealistic or random because Jones shows us the root circumstances that brought the character to that point. The audiobook rotates through a handful of narrators to give voice to these stories, and listening makes it even easier to feel that you're right there in the scene with the characters. I'm not sure exactly what I'm taking away from this book, but I don't regret the experience of reading it.