Like Life by Lorrie Moore

Like Life is comprised of eight short stories, all that left me with lingering images of isolation.  Ms. Moore captures the involuntary solitude of several of her interesting characters.

In Two Boys, Mary is conflicted over the two men in her life.  Boy Number one is married and obviously not as committed to Mary as she to him.  Boy Number two is caring and supportive, but financially unsound.  And just who is that little scamp who spits at and torments Mary???

You’re Ugly Too presents Zoe Hendricks, a troubled history professor from Illinois who travels to New York to visit her sister and attend her Halloween party.  Zoe’s introduction to Earl reveals some of the troubles she has alluded to her sister and leaves the man rather rattled.

Quotes:

Harry would leave the movie theater feeling miserable, stepping out into the daylight like a criminal, shoulders bent into coat-hanger angles, in his body the sick heat of hangover, his jacket rumpled as a sheet.

She was almost pretty, but her face showed the strain and ambition of always having been close but not quite.  There was too much effort with the eyeliner, and her earrings, worn no doubt for the drama her features lacked, were a little frightening, jutting out from the side of her head like antennae.

This is what she’d become :  a woman alone at the movies with everything in a Baggie.

After reading a recent New Yorker story by Ms. Moore, I’m not quite sure how I’d approach her.  Take for instance, the following excerpt from said story…

So sue me: I sometimes find President Trump’s voice reassuring. Not what he says. Not the actual words (although once in a while one of his “incredibles” reaches inside my chest cavity and magically calms the tachycardia). 

Read the entire story and you’ll see it was the headline/1st line that grabbed me and lured me in to the entire tale woven so neatly.  Perhaps I’d just let her do all the talking…

My rating for Like Life is an 8 out of 10.

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Next up, Charles Dickens’ Mudfrog and Other Sketches…