The first book by Ann Packer, a collection of short stories originally published in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and other magazines.
A recently separated husband realizes that his wife no longer loves him, but that it is his own life he misses, not her. A single woman in her mid-thirties finds that everyone, including her best friend at work, is pregnant, and that their joy can be observed but not shared. A couple, newly dating and not yet well-acquainted, go on a hunting trip that neither will ever forget. A gay man remembers his deceased mother and their vital and troubling intimacy. And in the title story, a young woman discovers on the anniversary of her father’s suicide that her brother may have found a “reason for living” in the love of a good woman.
Written with humor, wisdom, and tenderness, these stories are about the small ways in which we reveal ourselves and the moments in which our lives may be transformed.