Lorrie Moore

A collection of short fiction explores the ever widening gulf between men and women and the paradoxical fear of and yearning for intimacy in characters whose lives are marked by disillusionment, misunderstandings, boredom, and lack of direction. Reprint. 10,000 first printing.

Stories

Like Life

Trever

I came back and re-read this more recently and I'm bumping up to a 4. Moore's stories can be depressing, but there's a poignancy to them I think I didn't appreciate the first time I read her.

ORIGINAL:
3.5. Although I think Moore is a talented writer, these stories are just depressing. Sure, there's humor, but the omniscient narrator uses this humor in the same way the characters in the stories do: as a defense mechanism. We're hearing something a bit defeatist, so let's talk about this thing the character said once. It's not necessarily good or bad that Moore does this, it's just different. I will read more of her, but I just hope it's not as bleak.

Evan Hicks

Mary Coggins

Dean Peterson

In Like Life’s eight exquisite stories, Lorrie Moore’s characters stumble through their daily existence. These men and women, unsettled and adrift and often frightened, can’t quite understand how they arrived at their present situations. Harry has been reworking a play for years in his apartment near Times Square in New York. Jane is biding her time at a cheese shop in a Midwest mall. Dennis, unhappily divorced, buries himself in self-help books about healthful food and healthy relationships. One prefers to speak on the phone rather than face his friends, another lets the answering machine do all the talking. But whether rejected, afraid to commit, bored, disillusioned or just misunderstood, even the most hard-bitten are not without some abiding trust in love.

Like Life Stories