(Borrowed from the NYPL on 40th St.): Lorrie Moore's early collection of short stories follows confused and unhappy women in frayed relationships. I liked the first one, How to Be an Other Woman best. Written in the second person, it follows a single woman navigating an affair with a married man as she tries to value herself and not sell herself so cheaply. The prose is fragmentary in places with short sections of no more than a paragraph, like a tightly edited indie film. The Kid's Guide to Divorce is brief and shattering as a young girl recounts a night with her mom, watching old movies and dancing. The final story, To Fill, is longer and almost a novella. Another depressed woman deals with an unfaithful husband, her ailing mother, and the urge to steal from her department-store sales job. Quirky and compassionate. I liked these better than the one in Bark, a later collection.
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