These short stories are careful, quiet, thoughtful. Some are gorgeous. They're like photographs in that you get a sense of something, but the back story is left up to you. I love short stories for this, and these seem more at ease than others I've read. Pearlman seems to me to be imagining and testing. It has taken me a while to read them as you kind of need to let them breathe before starting the next one.
One of the best I think was
If Love Were All (sounds mushy from the title, promise it isn't). Sonya finds herself in London during WWII, helping find homes for displaced children. She is a drifter, doesn't really seem to know what to do with herself and doesn't want to settle. The tale plays out and ends, and then the next story
Purim Night follows Sonya as well, which is surprising and you get the feeling you don't want to know, you want to leave her at the start of something and not find out how it goes, but then obviously curiosity gets the better of you.
The only criticism I have to make is that I don't think books of short stories should be allowed to contain more than about 5 stories. No matter how good they are they get samey after a while. I don't seem to have the will power to read a few and then leave the rest because I want to know - and then regret it.
Thanks Pushkin Press for my copy!
Reading The Fields by Kevin Maher now, which is heartbreaking.
