Short stories by Lorrie Moore
Lorrie Moore is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. She is the recipient of the Irish Times International Prize for Literature, a Lannan Foundation fellowship, as well as the PEN/Malamud Award and the Rea Award for her achievement in the short story. She has been the recipient of the Mary McCarthy Award from Bard College. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where she teaches at Vanderbilt University.
Listing 9 stories.
An extended family gathers in Maryland for Christmas and plays a game of charades. During the game, various areas of family tension are revealed.
A young librarian with two dead parents moves across the country and meets an idealistic but shallow man. When their relationship falls apart, he urges her to give more of herself to the community, ignorant of the ways in which she's had to give so much away already.
When a former anti-war nudist files for divorce from his hippie-turned-middle-aged conservative wife, a figurative nuclear war fires up between the two suburban parents.
After finding out that her toddler has cancer, a fiction writer and her husband living in the American Midwest do everything they can to save their baby, including giving up her artistic integrity in order to pay for the medical bills.
Terrence and Ruth, a middle-aged couple, move house for a fresh start - but their new house is in disrepair. Ruth contends with sickness, unfulfillment, and her staling marriage while laboriously cleaning it.
A middle-aged woman is forced to grapple with her son’s mental illness and her partner’s disinterest. While she tries to accommodate everyone else, the woman begins to lose herself.
After accidentally killing a friend's baby, a 35 year old woman tries to find her footing again at her husband's academic conference in Europe—but finds herself struggling with herself and her marriage.
In the 1990s, a Hollywood star moves back to her hometown of Chicago and tries to find meaning in a relationship with a man whom she does not love.
American History professor Zoe Hendricks floats through a lonely life unnerving and offending those around her with her odd behavior and unfiltered speech. She flies to New York to visit her sister Evan and meets a prospective suitor, only to reject him in her tempestuous way.