A Place Like Home

Starred review from May 15, 2021
A delightful collection of short stories that explore the myriad facets of falling in and out of love. People are complicated. They have moods and frustrations and make impromptu decisions that have long-lasting repercussions. Love--falling in love, being in love, trying to rediscover love--can be even more wildly complex because it involves two people coming together. In this collection of 15 short stories, published together for the first time, Pilcher (1924-2019) has done something remarkable. Despite the brevity of the tales and the thematic constants (American-British pairings; living in London; monthlong trips; weekends in the country; wild and cultivated gardens; jobs as fashion editors, nurses, and lawyers; unexpected accidents; chance encounters; and a plethora of family members and siblings and children and loving mothers and, sometimes, women who have no one at all), each story stands alone, unique and memorable, with its own story of love found. Many stories cut off at their apexes--a kiss, a walk through an orchard, a walk up the aisle, the realization of joy and love and home found within another soul. These stories are very much products of the times in which they were written, however--many in the 1970s and '80s--and some notes clang instead of sing: the 30-year-old man dumping his girlfriend to rush to the side of an 18-year-old woman he'd secretly kissed and who's now home alone while her mother is gravely injured, and calling it selfless; the focus on being thin, looking too thin, or becoming fat after eating a few solid meals. This collection about love offers snippets of joy, small and large, and the tart balances the sweet to just the right degree.

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