This was the best collection of short stories, I’ve read since O’Henry.
No O’Henriesque twists, but fate and life and love deal the characters and us readers, enough drama that none are needed.
A couple of lines, that struck me …
Raymond didn’t like to talk back to his sister, but this time he thought she was wrong to say what she did.
“Well,” he said, “you know, maybe Miss Emily ain’t ever gonna be with a man like me, but I want to dream it anyway. It’s a nice feeling and I ain’t had one of those things to myself in a long time.
I know I don’t got a chance in hell, but it’s something to get me through. It’s to get through the next hour, the next day.
Don’t you go reminding me what dreams a man like me ought to have. That I can dream at all means something to me.”
My father did not grieve. He had done all of this life’s grieving when he became a refugee.
To lose your love, to be abandoned by your wife was a thing of luxury even—it meant you were alive.
P.S. Subscribe to my mailing list!
Forward these posts and letters to your friends and get them to subscribe!
P.P.S. Feed my insatiable reading habit.