by Helen Simpson
From an English author, a stunningly imaginative collection of 11 short stories--with emphasis on short. These hard-edged but soft-centered pieces are equal parts humorous and satiric. They are the author's own perceptions of real life from unique, even odd perspectives. Simpson could not care less about offering tidy moral lessons on how life should be led. Her intention in these tough-as-nails yet poetically styled stories is to get us to laugh along with her at the silliness of human nature but also to laugh with her over the fact that she, and we as well, are all part of human nature's silliness. "The Door" concerns a woman replacing an important feature of her house--as well as of her sense of personal security--after a break-in and finding herself stepping through a psychological frontier of peacefulness as she locates someone to do the job. The collection's crown jewel is "Every Third Thought," which opens provocatively with the lines "It happened very fast, without warning. One day everybody started dying" and proceeds to mock people's obsession with other people's illnesses, which, of course, is rooted in the universal condition of schadenfreude. One character, in reflecting on how everyone in her particular social group seems to have fallen ill, concludes, "I put it down to dairy. And the pill. Cut out cheese and change to condoms, that's what I say!" Remarkable fiction. Brad Hooper
