Author: Lorrie Moore

Title: Birds of America

Description: A short story collection.

Review source: It’s on EW’s list of best books of the last 25 years (well the 25 years previous to the list being published, which was before I started reading through it, which was many years ago).

Plot: Short stories aren’t really about plot anymore, are they?

Characters: They’re about characters, so there are characters in this book.

Writing style: These stories are very much like what I assume the typical MFA holds up as brilliant writing. Which is to say, they start in the middle of things, end in the middle of things, something might or might not happen, and it’s like looking into someone’s house for a bit, but it’s just someone just like me. Or not.

Audience: Literary fiction.

Wrap-up: I finished this book two or three weeks ago (yes, I put off writing reviews), and there’s only one story in it I can really remember, the last story, about a little boy who somehow has cancer. If this didn’t happen to Lorrie Moore, if this wasn’t the whole reason for the book being written, then I don’t get it. But it’s like she slipped this one true thing into the book of made up stories. 4/5*