Lorrie Moore's Birds of America

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What should she say? It must be the most unendurable thing to lose a child. Shouldn't he say something of this? It was his turn to say something.

But he would not. And when they finally reached her classroom, she turned to him in the doorway and, taking a package from her purse, said simply, in a reassuring way, "We always have cookies in class."

Now he beamed at her with such relief that she knew she had for once said the right thing. It filled her with affection for him. Perhaps, she thought, that was where affection began: in an unlikely phrase, in a moment of someone's having unexpectedly but at last said the right thing. We always have cookies in class.

(Excerpted from "Agnes of Iowa," which originally appeared in Elle. This quote is on page 88 of the Vintage paperback.)


From Birds of America, short stories by Lorrie Moore (1998).

What a great collection. I was going to type out more of my favorite segments, but there were just too many. Seriously.

Two stories from Guess Again by Bernard Cooper

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Guess Again, short stories by Bernard Cooper (Simon & Schuster, 2000).

"Exterior Decoration" (originally published--in slightly different form--on August 25, 1999 in The LA Weekly): "Standing at the living room window, Ray looked up from his morning coffee and saw that the garage door of the house across the street, which just yesterday had been a shade of beige, was now painted a sumptuous red. Ray froze mid-sip. He suspected that Cliff, still asleep in their bed, had sneaked out and done it in the middle of the night." (pp. 140-152 in paperback)

"A Man in the Making" (pp. 125-139 in paperback)