Animal Person: Stories

I wish I could be more enthusiastic about this book because the writer is skilled. He has won several awards for his gifts at short stories. Perhaps it is only the current climate that aggravates my angst while reading these stories? Or perhaps, it is the shock value which is written into average days which become nightmares.

Undeniably, it is interesting to learn of a serial suitcase thief who seems to takeover his victim’s lives in the act of taking their most intimate possessions. The author is undeniably creative in the stories he weaves around almost mundane lives. In the book’s opening story, a fractured marriage is exemplified and personified by the family pet: a rabbit. Has the main character been so constricted within the marriage that he has no life left or will the future restore him? The author poses no easy answers to the dilemmas of his characters, which in ordinary times, might make the suspense within these stories more readable for me.