There's nothing I enjoy reading more than an exceptional short story collection so, when a friend, writer, and fellow short story lover recommended Lorrie Moore's Birds of America, I rushed to put it on hold at the library. I had never heard of Moore before but, while she's not particularly "famous," I quickly discovered that she deserves much greater public attention. What struck me about her style was her ingenious blend of ironic humour and starkly human emotion. Her stories can seem light and even trivial on the surface but, when their meanings hit, they do so with tremendous force.
Moore uses exact and unadorned language; she brilliantly crafts her metaphors to capture emotions, culture and the subtleties of family dynamics. Her characters are deeply developed, relatable and yet totally unremarkable. They are the people you see in hotel lobbies, in grocery stores, in hospitals. They are us.
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