Bark

In these eight masterful stories, Lorrie Moore explores the passage of time and summons up its inevitable sorrows and comic pitfalls.

In Debarking, a newly divorced man tries to keep his wits about him as the US prepares to invade Iraq. In Foes, a political argument goes grotesquely awry as the events of 9/11 unexpectedly manifest at a fundraising dinner in Georgetown. In The Juniper Tree, a teacher, visited by the ghost of her recently deceased friend, is forced to sing 'The Star Spangled Banner' in a kind of nightmare reunion. And in Wings, we watch the unraveling of two once-hopeful musicians, who neither held fast to their dreams nor struck out along other paths.

Gimlet-eyed social observation, the public and private absurdities of American life, dramatic irony, and enduring half-cracked love wend their way through each of these narratives, in Moore's characteristic style that is always tender, never sentimental, and often heartbreakingly funny.