A fascinating short story collection offering glimpses into the lives of those usually unobserved.
Halpern offers a soulful collection of short stories, translated from the Yiddish.
The narrator of the story “Blessed Hands” uses her hands as a masseuse, bringing healing to those who need it, but also as a means of making money (“God wanted these same hands to draw their livelihood from touching the human body”). Her mother had to sell her breast milk, leaving none for her children. This story showcases the themes that will propel the stories that follow: healing, spirituality, family, and persevering through poverty. A butcher does not want his son to take on the family business, fearing he’ll be trapped in an identity framed by poverty and hard labor (“Hello, Butch”). In “The Last Breakfast,” a mother sends her son away to grow, change, and learn to be a man, but he meets a grisly fate. In both stories, a parent believes they must send their child away to have a better future, an idea they ultimately realize was wrong in one way or another. A girl who can’t walk without braces and crutches enjoys winter as a time when she can throw snowballs at other kids and finally play with them (“Snowballs”). A woman who has been trapped in a tomb of loneliness finds community and warmth at a leftist political meeting in “Comrade Bashe.” These two stories effectively convey the yearning of the characters for human connection. In other slice-of-life narratives, a shoemaker spends his days laboring away for minimal reward to keep his family fed and happy and is told a story by a religious scholar about the power of hard work (“Munye the Shoemaker and Baruch Spinoza”), and young women wait for news of their husbands away at war while they work and exchange letters to keep their spirits up (“Faces”). With these stories of ordinary people, Halpern demonstrates a sincere understanding of her characters. The pieces collected here were translated from Yiddish by Taub, who contributes a well-thought-out and researched afterword illuminating Halpern’s life and literary artistry, giving readers a fuller experience of her work.
A fascinating short story collection offering glimpses into the lives of those usually unobserved.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 978-1642510492
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Frayed Edge Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The range and virtuosity of these stories make this Mosley’s most adventurous and, maybe, best book.
A grandmaster of the hard-boiled crime genre shifts gears to spin bittersweet and, at times, bizarre tales about bruised, sensitive souls in love and trouble.
In one of the 17 stories that make up this collection, a supporting character says: “People are so afraid of dying that they don’t even live the little bit of life they have.” She casually drops this gnomic observation as a way of breaking down a lead character’s resistance to smoking a cigarette. But her aphorism could apply to almost all the eponymous awkward Black men examined with dry wit and deep empathy by the versatile and prolific Mosley, who takes one of his occasional departures from detective fiction to illuminate the many ways Black men confound society’s expectations and even perplex themselves. There is, for instance, Rufus Coombs, the mailroom messenger in “Pet Fly,” who connects more easily with household pests than he does with the women who work in his building. Or Albert Roundhouse, of “Almost Alyce,” who loses the love of his life and falls into a welter of alcohol, vagrancy, and, ultimately, enlightenment. Perhaps most alienated of all is Michael Trey in “Between Storms,” who locks himself in his New York City apartment after being traumatized by a major storm and finds himself taken by the outside world as a prophet—not of doom, but, maybe, peace? Not all these awkward types are hapless or benign: The short, shy surgeon in “Cut, Cut, Cut” turns out to be something like a mad scientist out of H.G. Wells while “Showdown on the Hudson” is a saga about an authentic Black cowboy from Texas who’s not exactly a perfect fit for New York City but is soon compelled to do the right thing, Western-style. The tough-minded and tenderly observant Mosley style remains constant throughout these stories even as they display varied approaches from the gothic to the surreal.
The range and virtuosity of these stories make this Mosley’s most adventurous and, maybe, best book.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8021-4956-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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PERSPECTIVES
The spirit of grace under pressure and creativity under fire animates a wonderfully diverse set of stories.
Ng selects 20 stories that illustrate why we might still read fiction in a time of disinformation and lies.
As the trials and tribulations of the 21st century have unfolded, the Best American Short Stories anthology has become a particular way of taking the temperature of each passing year. As Ng writes in her introduction to the latest group, “Short stories in particular can act like little tuning forks, helping us to clarify our own values—then allowing us to bring ourselves into alignment with what we believe. In a time when our values are being tested daily, it’s hard to think of anything more important.” Many of them are also fun to read, a quality appreciated more than ever by depressed and overwhelmed readers. The stories are ordered alphabetically, a structure maintained in the following selection, which is unfortunately limited by space. “Take Me to Kirkland,” by Sarah Anderson, is very funny, a little weird, and certainly one of Costco’s finest hours. “What Would I Do for You, What Would You Do for Me?” by Emma Binder is a cinematic mini-thriller about a trans kid visiting his hometown, terrified of being “clocked” by the people he grew up with after he saves a local from drowning. “Time of the Preacher,” by Bret Anthony Johnston, is one of several pandemic stories—in it, a snake, which may or may not be under the refrigerator, inspires a quarantine-breaking cry for help from a fence-builder’s ex-wife. Another story of that time, “Yellow Tulips,” by Nathan Curtis Roberts, also combines endearing, funny first-person narration with a more serious theme. A Mormon man in an uptight Utah suburb has to manage his developmentally disabled adult son through the complexities of quarantine. One day, he discovers that his son has “gotten into the provisions Mormons are all but commanded to keep, eating Nutella and Marshmallow Fluff from their jars.…Brig, we put these things aside for the apocalypse,’” the father says, while his son “grinned gleefully, sugary goo smeared across his lips and fingers. ‘It’s an apocalypse now!’”
The spirit of grace under pressure and creativity under fire animates a wonderfully diverse set of stories.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9780063399808
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
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