ANOTHER contender for best read of the year. This book has been sitting on my shelf for about 6 or 7 months now, and I just never 'felt in the mood' for a collection of short stories. I actually used this challenge as an excuse to get it over with and off my shelf, and it turned out to be addictively readable that I was through its 265 pages in less than a day. The stories are all about the African American experience, but not in a trite way where these truly emotional, affecting experiences become uneffective. And how was this done? Not through any fancy nouveau fiction styling, but through simplicity. As the NY Times review on the front cover says, "This is the old-time religion of storytelling." I would even modify that accolade a bit by saying this is the immortal art of storytelling, because I think these stories will resonate just as well in the decades to come. That's because Packer used her language, her words, so effectively, her similes felt fresh, not cliched and over tread, and her characters felt REAL.
I've read a few very good collections of short stories that have made me permanent fans of those writers and anything they write, but only one other collection has impressed, endeared and captured me the way this one has, and that was Jhumpa Lahiri's 'Unaccustomed Earth'.
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