An ornithologist's guide to life

Hood is a seductive storyteller, given her emotionally reckless and nonconformist characters, sensuous detail, precise dialogue, and keen rendition of the inner monologue that so often contradicts what we say and do. She also engineers just the sort of painful and inexplicable familial and romantic predicaments friends spend hours attempting to decipher. A novelist with a loyal following-- Ruby (1998) is her most recent--Hood now presents a collection of thorny short stories dramatizing the struggle to get on with life in the wake of divorce or death. Parental love interests Hood as much as romantic love, and she writes with electrifying frankness about child-custody conflicts, teenagers derailed by their father's suicide, a mother who finds the strength to tell her reticent gay son that she accepts who he is, and women facing unwanted pregnancies. But what's most arresting about these stories is their ferocious sexuality, an animality wryly noted in the collection's title and explored in each finely crafted tale with candor, wit, and high regard for women's resiliency and spirit. --Donna Seaman Copyright 2004 Booklist

A first collection by novelist Hood (Something Blue; Ruby; etc.) comprises 11 conventional but affecting stories that suffer from a back-cover comparison to Lorrie Moore and Antonya Nelson. The first, "Total Cave Darkness," is winning, relating the adventures of the alcoholic narrator (who has a tender love affair with the bottle) and a young, foxy minister on an injudicious road trip. "After Zane," which begins like Amy Hempel's masterful "Beg, Sl Tog, Inc, Cont, Rep" with a woman who staves off grief through compulsive domesticity, features a narrator who bakes constantly after the father of her unborn child decamps. Wonderful in parts, flabby in others, the story strains, like others here, for a final-page profundity (often via a lovely but easy metaphor). A gentle story about the growing friendship between a pregnant divorc?e and a Martha Stewart mom, for example, is marred by an ending that is simultaneously predictable and improbable. But Hood's stories can be quite moving: "Escapes" surprises with a fierce revelation that forges a stronger bond between a troubled young girl and her aunt, while in "The Language of Sorrow" a woman and her grandson grapple with matters of death and new life. Hood is a polished writer and a careful observer, and she walks the popular funny-sad line very well, but perhaps not as adroitly as the convention's aforementioned greats. Agent, Gail Hochman. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Hood (Ruby; Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine) focuses on relationships in these short stories, many of which were previously published in respected literary journals. Readers will meet an alcoholic and a minister on a rambling, adulterous tour of the mid-Atlantic; a woman and her teenaged grandson awaiting the birth of his child from a distance; a struggling couple who have a car accident, leaving the survivor to grieve; and three young girls who idolize the mother of their stepsister until they meet her. These stories have bite, much like Doris Lessing's newest, but they are not so stark. Hood has enough perception to leave her characters room to grow after the stories end. While each piece is distinctive, a continuity of voice ties them together. Recommended for libraries where there is an interest in short fiction or women's fiction.-Amy Ford, St. Mary's Cty. Memorial Lib., Lexington Park, MD (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Debut collection of 11 humorous, heartfelt stories by novelist Hood (Ruby, 1998, etc.), with characters who find small, determined ways to shock the bourgeoisie in and around Providence. The opener details a nutty affair between a 40-ish, teetering-on-the-wagon divorcÉe and the reverend who "saves" her. "Total Cave Darkness," which chronicles the pair's summer road trip across the country, brings into play all of Hood's marvelous skills: her quirky characterization, stylistic intelligence, and adroit timing combine to produce an ending that the reader feels in the gut. Elsewhere, while her people always come brilliantly to life, the author often spoils her delirious effects by forcing a pat conclusion. "The Rightness of Things," for example, pursues the deepening of an acquaintance between two young mothers, one married and one divorced, but ultimately disappoints when they fall out over conflicting ideas of sexual political correctness. "New People" has a similarly strained twist as it depicts the hot summer affair between middle-aged Marjorie, a longtime resident in the neighborhood, and her parvenu yard-boy. "Inside Gorbachev's Head" pursues another cross-generational romance, between Brown student Elliot and his mother's friend Georgia, while also tracing a bizarre network of relationships and adoptions. "Joelle's Mother," told in the first-person plural, revisits the painful prehistory of a family of sisters through the presence of their father's previous wife's daughter. Men don't necessarily behave well in these stories, particularly not fathers, who frequently desert or cheat on their wives (pregnant or otherwise), as in "After Zane." Hood strikes a more elegiac tone in "The Language of Sorrow," which shows a 78-year-old woman's memories of her dead son being revived by her visiting grandson's similarly self-destructive behavior, and in the title story, a lovely description of an 11-year-old girl watching the behavior of birds and adults as she comes of age in 1974 in Park Slope, Brooklyn. A strong, fine collection overall, if not consistently stellar. (Many of these pieces first appeared in The Paris Review, Glimmer Train, etc.) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Hood is a seductive storyteller, given her emotionally reckless and nonconformist characters, sensuous detail, precise dialogue, and keen rendition of the inner monologue that so often contradicts what we say and do. She also engineers just the sort of painful and inexplicable familial and romantic predicaments friends spend hours attempting to decipher. A novelist with a loyal following--Ruby (1998) is her most recent--Hood now presents a collection of thorny short stories dramatizing the struggle to get on with life in the wake of divorce or death. Parental love interests Hood as much as romantic love, and she writes with electrifying frankness about child-custody conflicts, teenagers derailed by their father's suicide, a mother who finds the strength to tell her reticent gay son that she accepts who he is, and women facing unwanted pregnancies. But what's most arresting about these stories is their ferocious sexuality, an animality wryly noted in the collection's title and explored in each finely crafted tale with candor, wit, and high regard for women's resiliency and spirit. ((Reviewed July 2004)) Copyright 2004 Booklist Reviews.

Hood (Ruby; Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine) focuses on relationships in these short stories, many of which were previously published in respected literary journals. Readers will meet an alcoholic and a minister on a rambling, adulterous tour of the mid-Atlantic; a woman and her teenaged grandson awaiting the birth of his child from a distance; a struggling couple who have a car accident, leaving the survivor to grieve; and three young girls who idolize the mother of their stepsister until they meet her. These stories have bite, much like Doris Lessing's newest, but they are not so stark. Hood has enough perception to leave her characters room to grow after the stories end. While each piece is distinctive, a continuity of voice ties them together. Recommended for libraries where there is an interest in short fiction or women's fiction.-Amy Ford, St. Mary's Cty. Memorial Lib., Lexington Park, MD Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

A first collection by novelist Hood (Something Blue; Ruby; etc.) comprises 11 conventional but affecting stories that suffer from a back-cover comparison to Lorrie Moore and Antonya Nelson. The first, "Total Cave Darkness," is winning, relating the adventures of the alcoholic narrator (who has a tender love affair with the bottle) and a young, foxy minister on an injudicious road trip. "After Zane," which begins like Amy Hempel's masterful "Beg, Sl Tog, Inc, Cont, Rep" with a woman who staves off grief through compulsive domesticity, features a narrator who bakes constantly after the father of her unborn child decamps. Wonderful in parts, flabby in others, the story strains, like others here, for a final-page profundity (often via a lovely but easy metaphor). A gentle story about the growing friendship between a pregnant divorc‚e and a Martha Stewart mom, for example, is marred by an ending that is simultaneously predictable and improbable. But Hood's stories can be quite moving: "Escapes" surprises with a fierce revelation that forges a stronger bond between a troubled young girl and her aunt, while in "The Language of Sorrow" a woman and her grandson grapple with matters of death and new life. Hood is a polished writer and a careful observer, and she walks the popular funny-sad line very well, but perhaps not as adroitly as the convention's aforementioned greats. Agent, Gail Hochman. (July) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.