A dispirited quality connects the characters in this second story collection from Guterson (
Snow Falling on Cedars), giving each such a strong sense of anonymity and isolation that the author avoids naming them in most instances. In the opening piece, "Paradise," a sixtysomething couple who meet through an online dating site struggle to ignite their new relationship at a romantic lodge but fail when the woman talks about a former lover on into the night. In one of the strongest stories, "Krassavitseh," a father and son on an emotional Jewish tour of Berlin to revisit the Jewish quarter where the father lived in the 1930s, find their guide also has a connection to the unthinkable horrors in Germany's wartime past. Retirement is not going well for the narrator of "Shadow" because he has developed short-term memory loss, a condition that causes him to miss a plane connection to see his son. "Photograph" depicts a husband and wife grieving over their grown son's drowning death, but the wife can only blame the husband because of a duck-hunting trip when the boy was 12 years old.
VERDICT Missed signals, isolation, distancing oneself from social contact—all describe the emotional core of Guterson's deeply affecting narratives. A haunting collection from a thoughtful storyteller. [See Prepub Alert, 12/16/13.]
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