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A review by dkrane
Birds of America by Lorrie Moore
5.0
So many wonderful, painful stories of lonely people just missing connecting with one another. Affairs and deaths, passion projects and aimlessness, a whole lot of searching with few answers mixed in with some unexpectedly weird endings. Moore embraces uncertainty and unresolvedness with a lot of these stories which can be frustrating when you invest so deeply in her characters, but is probably truer to life than easy catharsis. A lot of it’s a downer, but there are enough sprinkles of hope and bursting-at-the-seams humanity to guide any reader through the sadness.
Favorite stories include the brilliant and harrowing “People Like That are the Only People Here” about a mother of a toddler with cancer, “Real Estate” and its story of an isolated woman in her marriage finding new life reclaiming a new house; the hard-won redemption of “Terrific Mother,” grappling with the horrific aftermath of an accidental death; the lonely heartbreak of a librarian in “Community Life”; and the touching story of a woman mourning her cat’s death in “Four Calling Birds, Three French Hens.”
Favorite stories include the brilliant and harrowing “People Like That are the Only People Here” about a mother of a toddler with cancer, “Real Estate” and its story of an isolated woman in her marriage finding new life reclaiming a new house; the hard-won redemption of “Terrific Mother,” grappling with the horrific aftermath of an accidental death; the lonely heartbreak of a librarian in “Community Life”; and the touching story of a woman mourning her cat’s death in “Four Calling Birds, Three French Hens.”