Book Review: Birds of America

Birds of America by Lorrie Moore

Sometimes you know a writer's name, you know you've heard good things about them, but you don't know what you've ever read anything by them. This was the case for me with Lorrie Moore. So, when I stumbled across this title in a used book store, I figured it was time.

As I put down the book, though, I was not altogether impressed. First, why put the most depressing stories at the end? Because if they'd have come early on in the book, no one would make it through. And what a way to leave the reader. And what came before the final two stories was not all that original.

I love the modern short story, full of disjointed relationships, eclectic characters, sarcastic and sardonic, but without profundity nothing earnest is revealed. Not that the stories were bad, or not interesting even, but they just didn't stand out to me.