Abstract

This collection of five short stories is arranged around the theme of failed relationships, both familial and romantic. Though its point-of-view characters are exclusively female, the collection is an attempt to explore the dynamics of interdependence in both male and female experience, and is concerned with the ways in which an individual is inevitably located in a social construct even as he or she struggles to maintain an individual space within it. Distance is an important preoccupation in each of the stories, so that the narrative voice attempts to reflect the distance each character maintains from the people in her life, as well as the difficulties of knowing, or being known by, another. In all cases, the stories are concerned with life's very small lessons--the things we learn through exchanges that are almost unnoticeable events in the course of a day or a life. Although no character achieves unqualified fulfillment by the end of her story, each comes away with some small new piece of understanding--of insight--that better prepares her for the future.