Recalling the edgy realism of her writing mentor Lucia Berlin, the expertly paced fictions of Geoghegan’s second collection combine love stories with travel narratives, charting the emotional and physical landscapes of characters who long for intimacy but too often end up feeling disconnected and world weary. Unfolding variously in Chicago, Boulder, Bangkok, and the Veneto, these stories explore themes of desire and loneliness, and Geoghegan, who grew up in the Midwest and now lives in Rome, writes with a wry humor and eloquence that deftly excavates the line between alluring illusion and disappointing actuality.
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The twelve stories of Rosenwaike’s honest, empathetic debut collection explore the many things motherhood means to young women. Evoking the challenges of both becoming and not becoming a mother, Rosenwaike, Michigan Quarterly fiction editor and contributor to The O. Henry Prize Stories 2013, shows how children—or the lack of them—shape families, relationships, and identity. One story charts the contrasting experience of two sisters, one of whom first rejects parenthood then gets pregnant and keeps the child, while the other endures endless, fruitless infertility treatments; other pieces follow the annual Mother’s Day gatherings of a group of motherless, childless women and track a pregnant poet as she revisits the might-have-beens of an unrequited love.
