Book Review: Anagrams

(Read on my phone on the Libby app.) At about 100 pages into Lorrie Moore's first novel, I said to myself, "What the hell is going on here?" There are four sections and the first three are short vignettes with three main characters, recurring in each section but with different relationships and circumstances. Then the final long, novella-length section is the "reality" of their shared situation (I guess). Then I remembered the title and realized what Moore was doing--rearranging the plots and characters like anagrams in a puzzle. I won't reveal too much of the multiple, shifting storylines, except they revolve around Benna, who is either an amateur nightclub singer or a community college professor of art history or poetry. Musician-singer Gerard may or may not be in love with her. Benna's friend Eleanor is the third point of a triangle or maybe she's not. 

I've enjoyed Moore's short stories and her other novel Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? Here, the characters may like wordplay a bit too much. They are always making clever puns. But I did feel the emotions for which the jokes act as a shield. Benna, Gerard, Eleanor, and other characters Darrel and Louis are all desperately lonely with tragedies impacting them. Their aches comes across in their eccentric actions and Moore depicts them with compassion.