Synopses & Reviews
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.
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"[W]ondrously witty....With gallows humor and unfailing understanding, Moore evokes her characters' quiet desperation and valiant searches for significance." Publishers Weekly
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"Although the stories in Like Life are as funny and archly observant as those in Ms. Moore's earlier collection, they are also softer, wiser, more minor-key....The results are richer, more ambitious stories...moving examinations of lives in transition." The New York Times
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"Moore's best book....[D]isplays an impressive range of voice and tone and a punning, exuberant humor." Washington Post Book World
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"While Like Life boasts the verbal acrobatics and gallows humor of Self-Help, it contains a moving emotionality that was previously banned....Filled with lovely, almost surreal descriptions." The Boston Globe
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"A brilliant collection....The funny and the tragic dovetail with precision and poignancy." The Philadelphia Inquirer
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"Hilarious and generous and true. Moore's work continues to astound." Newsday
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"Affecting and beautifully written....[Moore's] keenly detailed language and unfailing generosity of spirit are irresistible." San Francisco Chronicle
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"Insightful and moving....A rewarding, even exhilarating book." The New York Times Book Review
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"[Moore's] brilliant and ever-expanding body of work suggests there are few enduring pleasures left to us not least of which are laughing, weeping, and marveling at the countless ways we stumble through." The Village Voice
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"Lorrie Moore is a dazzler....She mixes comedy and sadness, wisecracks and poignancy." John Casey, Chicago Tribune
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"Moore dances around the edges of broken relationships with a delicacy that expresses both despair, acceptance, and a fledging resilience to try again....These are stories that bear rereading." Library Journal
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"Taut, subversive tales...fueled by a sensibility as dark as Margaret Atwood's." The Christian Science Monitor
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"The best American writer of her generation." The Sunday Times (London)
Synopsis
From the national bestselling author of Birds of America comes "a brilliant collection" (The Philadelphia Inquirer) of eight exquisite stories of men and women stumbling through their daily existence.
In Like Life, Lorrie Moore's 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.
About the Author
Lorrie More is the author of the story collections Birds of America and Self-Help, and the novels Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? and Anagrams. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Best American Short Stories, and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards. She is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.