Five varied and interesting stories, written in Doctorow's clear and fluid style. ( )

Short stories, gracefully told. ( )

Doctorow is a real storyteller. In this collection he masterfully presents a range of characters each of which fails in life, due to a lack of intelligence, bad luck, poor background etc. These are the losers of the American Dream. The story of Jolene is heartwrenching in its inevitability. ( )

For the first time that I can remember, I loved every single selection in a collection like this. Short fiction is so often hit or miss with me, and even when I greatly enjoy some of the stories, others usually feel flat and pointless. There are only five stories in the collection, and each one is a gem. Three of the five are told in the first person. The most powerful of the lot is "Walter John Harmon", a first person narrative from inside the head of a member of a religious cult founded by a former mechanic who survived a cyclone that engulfed the repair shop where he worked. It is downright terrifying to note how the healthy skepticism of the seemingly rational narrator gradually turns to cautious acceptance of the cult's lifestyle requirements, and ultimately morphs him into a true believer and incipient fanatic. In "A House on the Plains", the narrator is a young man whose mother is up to something, the nature of which gradually and subtly becomes horribly clear. It's a tiny little novel, and I rate it right up there with Tom Tryon's [The Other] for the way pieces fall in place to suggest and then reveal a picture you don't want to see but can't look away from. "Child, Dead, in the Rose Garden" is a touching portrait of a disillusioned FBI agent who does what he can unofficially to rectify a sad situation created by a disturbed young woman with a grudge against her father and a bureaucratic system that sees nothing in human terms. Highly recommended.
Reviewed December 2015 ( )

These stories are wonderful. ( )