Each of the stories in this collection is bright and sharp, honed and polished like a diamond. They are filled with telling details and unexpected shards of pain. I have my favorites ("Babies on the Shore") and those I really would not have minded missing ("On the Loose" and "Under the Scalpel"); but those emotional reactions are based not on an objective assessment but rather on which set of images appealed to me in the moment. I'm sure the ones I disliked are the favorites of other readers, and my favorites likely totally missed for others, because the quality is amazingly even (and high) across the entire collection of thirty stories. The only flaw, really, is that each of the stories hits a very similar note: desperate, broken people doing their best to fit themselves into a world that is not shaped for them. It made reading more than a couple stories at a time dreary, and the one day that I tried reading quite a few back to back that dreariness devolved into tedium. The collection needed a few more stories that ended on a hopeful note to leaven the pain. But as long as I remained disciplined and rationed the stories out day by day, they were both heartbreaking and impressive.

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