On "Not Just Roommates" by Elizabeth H. Pleck ***

Pleck wants cohabitors to have the same rights (and arguably obligations) as married folk. As she sees it, this is one of the last lines of civil rights that has not been fully fixed in the legal and government realm. Morality should have nothing to do with the law.

Many of these observations seem absurd to me. Why even have marriage if cohabitors have all the same rights (and obligations)? And what is the law other than our codified sense of morality?

The book is engaging, however, as an exploration of the history of cohabitation and of changing community standards. Sadly, laws against cohabitation have often been put in place or enforced, not primarily because they were meant to uphold marriage (the general excuse), but because they helped to foster other less worthy societal goals. For example, community officials, at various points in history, have "dropped in on" women who were on welfare. If a man was found living with the woman (or even if it was only suspected, because she had a boyfriend of sorts, live-in or not), then she was booted off the welfare roles, saving the government money. The object here was to save money rather than to actually help families. Likewise, cohabitation laws have also been used at times to prevent interracial relationships. Finding it illegal to marry, interracial couples also found it illegal to forge a live-in relationship outside of marriage. In other words, just plain illegal.

The latter is an issue that affects the gay and lesbian community now. And Pleck's chapter on that is rather fascinating from a legal standpoint. In times past, many gays and lesbians called into question the whole culture of marriage, seeing it as limiting to sexual freedom and as indoctrinating as to an old patriarchal view of society. However, gays and lesbians also found themselves out of luck when it comes to many of the rights granted to married couples (shared health insurance being a big one, various inheritance and estate issues as well), so a vast segment pushed to have those rights accorded to themselves also. Some communities reacted with domestic partnership laws that have benefited live-in romantic partners as well. But a domestic partnership isn't always recognized with the same legal force as marriage, and the difference--even in name--suggests that one form of relationship is more legitimate than another. Hence, a community that has often called into question the value of marriage ironically also has ended up pushing for the right to have marriage extended to itself.

Which gets back to the question of why accord the same rights and obligations to people living together as to those who marry? Why live together rather than marry, if all the same rules apply? And vice versa? Is it the government's job to encourage marriage or to be involved in the marriage business at all?

I can see where an argument can be made for simply letting every person, married or not, have the same tax benefits, visitation benefits, health-care benefits, be it that the partner is a spouse or not. But why stop there? Why not "just roommates"? After all, how fair is it to extend such rights to people who are in love versus to those of us--me for most of my life--who have not managed to find such love but who might have another person who might benefit from the same legal amenities?

In this case, maybe marriage should be left to our religious and other institutions. Attach no government policy to such a status whatsoever. After all, our government has made a mockery of it anyway, the way that couples can forge and unforge such pacts with such ease such that marriage often isn't any more than a contractual agreement to live together for a time anyway.

But then again, government does have a role to play in encouraging behaviors that contribute to the stabilization of society, and I would argue that marriage, when implemented in a proper way, does just that. Yes, children are resilient, as Pleck argues in the first chapter, but a child raised in the stable home of a married couple is generally going to end up having an easier go at adult life than one who is bounced from home to home, single parent to stepparent to single parent. In the end, on a social dynamic sphere, the institution of marriage is about the kids (more than the couple).

On "What Do We Have in Our Pockets?" by Etgar Keret (521 words) ***

Not sure this counts as a story. It's more a thought piece, a question posed and answered. The rising arc in this case is one not of conflict, climax, and resolution but of mystery posed and mystery answered. But it's a form that can work just as well for flash or even for many a work of fiction. Keret here asks us to meditate on the contents of his pocket, on why he carries so much about. Alas, I carry most of these things myself, but not for the same reason, and unfortunately, in my forty-plus years, I've never had the kind of opportunity Keret's narrator dreams of having. Read the story here at Failbetter.

On "Canada" by Laura Breitenbeck (1580 words) ****

The old cliche is that women like bad boys. And certainly, in this short tale, that seems the case. Bad boys--and the nation of Canada--become the place of dream and imagination to a girl bored by her comparatively safe surroundings. We want what we don't--and what we can't--have. Read the story here at Superstition Review.

On “Daring Wives” by Frances Cohen Praver ***

This book discusses why women cheat on their husbands, using mostly cases studies arranged by type of household (stay-at-home wives, working wives, older women with younger men, remarriages, same-sex affairs, and sexually hungry wives). I read the book mostly because I was curious as to why women cheated but also to see what sort of men their husbands were. I found myself identifying with the men in the stay-at-home section of the book but not with the men in the rest of the book.

The two husbands in the case study in the stay-at-home section could be described this way. The first one was a hard worker who supplied for his wife materially, but he was not very passionate. The second husband was one who was not very motivated to improve his life but who on the whole was a morally stand-up guy. In both cases, the wives found their husbands boring and wanted more from them in terms of passion. In the first case, the wife resented the fun and adventure her husband got to have at work while she stayed at home and took care of the house; he'd come home tired and not want to entertain her. In the second case, the wife pushed the husband to better and better jobs. She got off on the power this made her feel, but such also caused her to lose respect for her husband. The first woman had an affair with a man who she felt appreciated her more, especially physically. The second had an affair with a classic bad boy, a man into the drug culture who lived on the edge. What I learned is that if I were to ever marry, I do need to pay attention to my wife's need to feel desired--not something I would necessarily be very good at, I've learned, since I may not always be in the mood to “desire.” I also need to remain motivated to keep improving myself, but outside of that, I don't know that I could do much to prevent something like the second situation.

The other sections of the book either focused more on the women and their personal problems or presented husbands that were very unlike me: controlling, domineering, angry, and so on. In most cases, as the author brings out, the women were looking for something missing in their marriage, not necessarily or primarily sex. Even in the case of the women who wanted sex that their husbands couldn't or wouldn't provide, the route cause of this generally came from some need to feel heavily wanted or to avoid feeling inferior and so on.

While I enjoyed the case studies quite a bit, I don't think my views align with the author's at all in terms of morality. She stresses throughout that extramarital affairs are not a sin, and that women should not be shamed into thinking such. We all need to find what fulfills ourselves. This whole idea runs contrary to how I would say our society should be structured. If sin is breaking a law, and law is ultimately about showing love to our neighbor (as well as to ourselves), then sin is a breaking of love. All's well and fine, I suppose, to go off and have an affair to fill your own needs if that's all you care about, but marriages are about supplying for your spouse and family, and if we can't do that, then there is something desperately wrong. Extramarital relations damage that ability to supply love. A better way to seek such fulfillment is to find a way to communicate those needs to those around us, without resorting to hurting them.

And while the author seems bent on saying there is no sin, it's interesting that she'll use loaded vocabulary in places to describe certain kinds of actions or people. Women were once in the “cruel clutches” of doctors, for example, who tried to cure them of being overly sexual. If there is no morality, then there is not cruelty. There is only action and reaction. Of course, the author doesn't really mean that there is no morality, as becomes plain in her conclusion, wherein she spells out a new morality based on women's needs and a more egalitarian sense of power within marriage. All well and fine, but that means that there is such a thing as right and wrong, good and bad--and sin. The issue I have with “new morality” is that it often throws out the “old morality” because of some twisted ideas that got connected to it (e.g., women's inferiority), when in fact the morality as a whole (putting others' needs before our own) makes a lot of sense.

So while I value the book for its specific examples, I can't say I came away feeling like we're moving to a better place, when an academic is telling us to simply do what feels good no matter what those actions do to others.

On "Vox Staccato and the Eight-Bit Mafia" by Garnett Elliott (4201 words) ***

This story is pure pulp, but it's written with the flair of pulp masters, and that's why I'm featuring it here. The tale is about one Travis, a man sent to fix video game developers, keep products coming to market at the appropriate time. Alas, his job is supposed to be more genteel than he was aware of, and for that, some consequences are about to be paid. Read the story here at ThugLit.

On "Scold" by Arthur Diamond (6334 words) ****

Diamond's "Scold" works off a set of stereotypes--or rather, it begins there and asks us to think about them in the context of religion. Rabbi Barsimson, along with a black nurse, helps an Asian lady who falls down one day in the street. The black nurse makes a series of comments about Jews that essentially places the rabbi into a set of typically Jewish distinctives he doesn't fit. The story shifts here to the rabbi's congregation, which is selecting a new rabbi--one who is a lesbian who uses puppetry as part of her sermons. The older members in the congregation have no interest in such a rabbi; the younger ones, however, support her. Barsimson seems both supportive and dismissive of the new way--he knows that he can't change what's coming, but he recognizes that it must be accepted, just like the fact that the congregation itself will likely dissolve in the next year, replaced with a mosque (unbeknownst to most of the lay people). The key, perhaps, is to stick together, to help one another, Barsimson seems to hint, but he never quite manages to articulate it other than with the bloodstains that still rest on his pants. Read the story here at Ascent.

On "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera *****

I've intended--wanted--to read this book for a long while. Somehow, I managed to make it to four other books by Milan Kundera over the past couple of decades before I got to this one. I put off, for a long while, seeing the movie, in part because I didn't want the movie running through my head or ruining the "what happens next?" element of the novel.

And then, I gave in, watched the movie. I feared I'd probably ruined the book. And in a few ways, arguably, I may have. When Tereza and Tomas and Sabina wander into the pages, I end up with the movie actors in my head rather than Kundera's prose (although he doesn't give long physical descriptions of most of them, so at least the film doesn't completely obliterate the actual facts of the book). But in most ways, the film had no bearing at all on how I felt about the book. For one, the book isn't chronological, while the film is. This made for some interesting reading, despite having seen the film, examining the cyclical structure, how Kundera returns several times to events from alternate points of view--and then realizing how the filmmaker would have had to put all of this in "order."

Second, this is Kundera writing, and how could I have thought the movie could even come close to exhausting the book? The thing about Kundera--and I write this in regard to his novels (I found his story collection somewhat disappointing, as well as his book on writing)--is that his work is as much philosophy as it is fiction. He proposes particular ideas, and then he works them out with his characters. In this way, he makes concrete what other philosophers fail to, and what's more, he complicates whatever he has to say in interesting ways.

A major theme of this novel is borne in its title. Kundera spends a good chunk of the text discussing the way to happiness and fulfillment. Is the better life the light one or the heavy? Happy lives are carefree--but such would mean they lack depth or great meaning, which are themselves means toward happiness. Heavy responsibilities weigh us down, take away from our ability to enjoy things, and yet, they are what makes things meaningful and thus lend to our happiness. And so, which is it? Or is it some kind of combination? Or do we even get a choice of one or the other?

As Kundera points out at some point, all meaning in life is eventually robbed from us through death. I love this line: "Before we are forgotten, we will be turned into kitsch. Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion." The idea is that our memories, our history, is turned into some kind of silly amusement for generations that come after us, trinkets that are sold in the market; rides, restaurants, and theme parks that tourists gamble away time in. These are the means by which future generations remember us, the means by which we stick around, and they are also the means by which we are forgotten. Eventually, even the trinkets go away, and the amusements give way to things in more recent memory. (I think of the 1950s restaurants that were so popular in the 1980s. I think of the bar in town called 8Es, which already has its follow-up 9Ds. In one of the Back to the Future films, the main character goes to a 1980s-themed restaurant, which is all kitsch, as the filmmaker figures on the 1980s being remembered, as we were remembering the 1950s then.)

Tomas, a doctor in Czechoslovakia just before the Russian takeover in the 1960s, has love dropped in his apartment so to speak, when he meets a young server in a coffee shop. She comes to his apartment--as so many women do--but unlike most said women, she stays, because she gets sick. And then, she stays for the long term. Tomas continues his philandering ways, but the young woman, Tereza, stays with him. They go to Switzerland when the Russians come to Czechoslovakia. But Tereza wants to return home and does; Tomas, who has devoted his life to the heavy work of aiding sick people, decides to follow--and as a result, must give up his career, for the two of them were anti-Communist sympathizers who cannot be allowed to hold important jobs, even though such means the nation is not served by the medical talents that Tomas has. Tereza, one day, realizes that Tomas has had to give up everything for her--life in the city, his women, his career. She feels sad for him, guilty, but he says in fact that he is the happiest he has ever been. Weight? Lightness? Both? Does it matter?

On "At the Edge of the Earth" by Brandon Patterson (3896 words) ***

Patterson's tale is one of exploration, not unlike those of the 1400s and 1500s, when Europeans realized (again) that there was land beyond the sea. During that time, writers like Jonathan Swift could write fantastic tales like Gulliver's Travels and have some people believe them halfway seriously. Patterson wanders into that world through the life of John Cabot, or Giovanni Caboto, as he prefers to call him. But in the realm of fantasy, the world turns out not to be a sphere but rather flat--or, to be more precise, perhaps like a cylinder, with the top flat but the rest round. The meaning of this is what makes for a tale not unlike a Twilight Zone episode. Read the story here at Prime Number.

On "Stranger Danger" by Hadley Moore (4192 words) ****

I love Moore's "Stranger Danger" for its little observations that ring so true. Katherine is a single mom. The father, however, is kindly very involved in her son's life, as is his wife. There's a moment, toward the beginning of the story, when Katherine realizes that her boyfriend is not going to stick with her after her son's birth. "I wonder who's he'll be," he says. But that's not the most chilling detail. I find one a bit later to be so incredibly true to people who don't fit the mold of the typical American trajectory. As a single mom whose father's son is married, Katherine feels like the interloper in her own son's life, as if he has a perfect family of his own, and she's just a glorified babysitter. I love that detail because I can so identify with it, as perennial single guy among married and childed friends. I'm still the kid, the not fully adult one, even though I'm older than a lot of those around me. Because of how things came out in life, I never got to grow up. Katherine, too, feels this sad kind of halfness. I thank Moore for bringing this woman so well to life. Read the story here at Ascent.

On "Grandeur" by John Carr Walker (3929 words) ***

Paul Bowles has a story wherein a man and a snake change consciousness. Walker's "Grandeur" reminds me a tiny bit of that story, not because two creatures exchange consciousnesses but because it is a story about transformation, about man becoming animal--in this case, bird. In the narrator's singularity of vision, it is hard to think in any other way. Read the story here at Prime Number.

On "The Happiness Myth" by Jennifer Michael Hecht ****

In this book, Hecht sets out to discuss what makes us happy and to denote how some of our ideas about what makes for a happy life may be wrong--or at least are culturally determined by the particular place and time in which we live. Once basic living needs are met, happiness generally does not go up or down depending on how much one has. Happiness can't be said to have grown over the millennia as technology has gotten more sophisticated and given us more of what we want. It is a constant. So wherein does happiness reside?

For the answer to this, she begins by looking at four philosophical perspectives--that happiness resides in finding yourself, that happiness resides in ridding yourself of desire, that happiness resides in indulging your desires, and finally that happiness resides in seizing the day (bearing in mind always that death lies just down the road).

Next she turns to four items she says can bring happiness but that our society often claims do not: drugs, money, body, and parties. Actually, society says all these things can bring happiness, but how these things are configured in that happiness quotient depend on the culture and time in which we exist--and that is closer to what Hecht appears to be claiming.

The chapters on drugs were particularly enlightening, as Hecht takes a historical perspective on the usage and nonusage of banned substances. Cocaine, for example, is banned in our own day, but into the early 1900s had been used as an elixir for those needing a bit of a pick-me-up, even among pregnant women. The coca leaf is, of course, still used among peoples in South America, chewed to make life a little sweeter. Its overuse and concentration led it to be considered dangerous--and eventually got it banned. Opium experiences a similar descent. But today, we have other drugs--prescription drugs--that can relieve our depression, no more safe if misused than some of the banned substances. Our culture in part determines what is okay and what is not. Of particular note here is a religion (I can't recall now the particular faith--perhaps Mormons) who banned alcohol and tea but who allowed the usage of a particular herb in a drink that later turned out to be a much more dangerous predecessor to our contemporary amphetamines. Likewise, she draws on an interesting study that connects religion and drug usage--showing that those who experience "highs" and transcendent experiences on a drug during a religious experience are more likely to remain devoted to that religion (the problem is that most druggies lack the discipline demanded of religion, and most faiths look down on drug usage).

The section on bodies was probably the next most interesting to me. In it, Hecht shows how various diet and exercise fads have come and gone and how certain things we see as healthful today were seen as just the opposite a century ago. Exercise, for instance, is now seen as so good that we go to gyms to work out because we don't get enough of it in our work; in the 1800s, exercise would have been seen as expending energy were are better off conserving if we wish to live long. In the end, it seems that moderation in all things is most likely to breed healthful, happy living.

I found the sections on money and parties less intriguing. The section on money largely focuses on what materialism gives and fails to give us. And the section on festivals seemed a bit dubious to me to begin with, as parties, to me, seem the essence of happy moments. That is why they are thrown. Hecht focuses on ancient Greek festivities and shows how they might be related to our human need to occasionally leave off our traditional roles.

I enjoyed this book as an historical account of how humans have viewed various fads and various ideas about how we can best be healthy and happy. It is when focusing on these details that Hecht is at her best.

On "Country Lepers" by Brad Felver (6823 words) ****

Who's helping whom? That's a question posed in Felver's odd letter to his narrator's new lover. Divorced from his old living situation, the narrator goes to live with an old man who has something of a skin condition, an old man who is willing to put up with the narrator and his obsession with his former wife and her new boyfriend. Read the story here at Summerset Review.

On "Girl in the Mirror" by John W. Buckley (7464 words) ****

Reading this story, I was reminded a bit of a story I'd read in a creative writing class years ago, an account of a tongue piercing. We don't get a tongue piercing here, and the language isn't nearly so artificially lyric, but what we do get is a wonder portrait of a younger girl trying to find herself and trying to hook a guy on whom she has a crush. Sometimes, discovering yourself is about discovering another person. Read the story here at Menda City Review.

On "Minutes of the Last Meeting" by Daniel B. Meltzer (2456 words) ***

Verisimilitude is an object of many a writer's pen. But realism, as we think of it, is rarely realistic. Fiction has its own tone, its own level of reality, different from history writing or letters--except in those instances when fiction takes on the tone of history or of letters. Enter Meltzer's "Minutes," which is a sendup of just that: minutes from a meeting. The tale documents why I so rarely care much for attending meetings. Read the story here at Prime Number.

On "The Four Loves" by C. S. Lewis ***

A minister got me thinking about the biblical word for "love." He was talking about the Greek term "agape" meaning the love of God, perfect, selfless love. It's a common refrain among Christian teachers. But I was suddenly contemplating the Greeks themselves. The Greeks had no concept of God as Christians do; they had a pantheon of gods. So from where springs a term specifically referencing Godly love? That cannot be how it was used in the Greek.

Some research on the Greek terms--storge, philia, eros, and agape--conveyed to me that the meanings are not perhaps as settled as Christian teachers make it out to be. Indeed, "agape" is often used in the Bible to represent a selfless Godly love, but it can sometimes be used for selfish loves as well (the love of money, the love of the world). "Philia" might be the love of friends, but it is also used in a selfless sense (John 16:27 and Titus 3:4 use "philia"). I tried looking for the term "agape" in contemporary works outside the scriptures but found few; it was, outside the Bible, not so often used apparently. So perhaps the "Godly love" usage took some precedent even among first-century Christians. But not completely. Leave that to the 1800s, to an author who predated C. S. Lewis, and then to Lewis himself and this defining book. Those who give little credence to the differences between philia and agape blame Lewis for making the distinction so concrete, too concrete. But many of these same critics then said they'd never read the Lewis book; I decided I couldn't be one of those, that I needed to see what Lewis himself said.

Interestingly, the term "agape" did not come up in Lewis's book, so far as I remember. But the concept, as espoused by Christian teachers, certainly did. There is a human love and a Godly one, the latter one to which we aspire. This love, Lewis calls, in his final chapter, charity (as in the KJV translations of 1 Corinthians 13). To inherit that "heavenly kingdom," Lewis says, we must give up our natural loves for a spiritual one, must let the natural transform into the spiritual: Our earthly love can enter the heavenly kingdom "only on one condition; not a condition arbitrarily laid down by God, but one necessarily inherent in the character of Heaven: nothing can enter there which cannot become heavenly. 'Flesh and blood,' mere nature, cannot inherit the Kingdom. Men can ascend to Heaven only because the Christ, who died and ascended to Heaven, is 'formed in him.' Must we not suppose that the same is true of a man's loves? Only those which Love Himself has entered will ascend to Love Himself. And these can be raised with Him only if they have, in some degree and fashion, shared His death; if the natural element in them has submitted--year after year, or in some sudden agony--to transmutation."

In this sense, Lewis does pose a spiritual love as above a physical love. I'm not as sure the Bible makes this distinction quite as certain. In places, God's love for man is denoted as "philia"--friendship/brotherly love. And yet Lewis, when speaking in metaphor of earthly loves, equates God's love more with the other two Greek words: "Friendship is very rarely the image under which Scripture represent the love between God and Man. It is not neglected; but far more often, seeking a symbol for the highest love of all, Scripture ignores this seemingly almost angelic relation and plunges into the depth of what is most natural and instinctive. Affection is taken as the image when God is represented as our Father; Eros, when Christ is represented as the Bridegroom of the Church."

But a concordance search shows neither "eros" nor "storgi" explicitly appear in scripture. Meanwhile, "philia" (and derivatives) is used at least six times in reference to love between God and man.

Interestingly, Lewis does hold friendship love in a fairly high but special esteem, enough that, before I got to his chapter on charity, I thought he might not actually hold a strong view of hierarchies of love. What Lewis admires about friendship love is that it is the one love that is not as much based on need or on giving (a distinction he sets up in the first chapter and returns to in the last and which I will discuss shortly). It is, as he notes, "the least natural of loves; the least instinctive, organic, biological, gregarious and necessary." There is no expectation that your friend do something for you other than that you simply enjoy each others' company--though should a need arise, friends will help one another out--and then go back to being friends. While "eros," Lewis notes, is about naked bodies, "philia" is about naked souls. Good friends drive us toward goodness, while evil friends drive us toward the evil. Friends hold each other in high esteem, esteeming themselves more lowly than the others in their coterie (but the danger is that the coterie itself will often view itself as higher than those outside it).

I noted that Lewis makes a big deal about need and giving. He says, in his first chapter, that all earthly love is based on these two principles. At first, we might be inclined to say that God is the giver and humanity the needer, and that might make us think giving a superior love. "Need," we might say, is selfish. But Lewis points out that no one would claim that a baby who needs its mother or a child who looks up to and for his father is selfish. So we cannot quite equate need love with selfishness but rather a different form of love. (Indeed, a give love could be selfish as well, if the reason for the giving is to prop up one's own egocentric needs.) Spiritual love, however, Lewis points out in his last chapter transforms and transcends these components. And in fact, the greatest form of love is simply appreciation.

On "Oranges" by Anthony Doerr (2032 words) ****

Reading some people's writing seems so effortless that it's hard to believe that hours of craftsmanship went into the final product. Doerr's tale "Oranges" is one of those. Ostensibly a love story about two people who meet on the plane, the tale sets one perfect word after another. Oranges, as one might imagine, play a large role, a kind of motif running throughout--their juice, their smell, their skin, their core--but most off the one in which a gifted person peels them whole, making of them a single string, like history--sets of events--rolling around and around and around to make finally a whole. Read the story here at rkvry.

On "Nevada County" by Sarah Marshall (2689 words) ****

Marshall's "Nevada County" is about a runaway, a thirteen-year-old with an idea of what being an adult means and no idea whatsoever. She is playing at being a hooker, at being independent. She has no money and is headed nowhere fast unless it's down. This is a story more about a character than a plot, a sketch of sorts, that reveals, in a final telling detail, how little this gal is and how much more she has to learn. It's a heartbreaker. Read the story here at Necessary Fiction.

On "Paul" by Daniel Davis (3740 words) ***

There's a kind of cold scariness to this tale that starts out as a sort of existential mystery. Chris--or is it Chris?--is sitting in a bar when a man comes up and starts talking to him as if he is Paul, an old acquaintance the man hasn't seen in a year. Usually, when people tell another that they are not who the person is looking for, that's the end of the conversation. We bow out, apologizing, a bit sad, a bit confused, a bit embarrassed. Not here. The man insists that Chris is Paul. And so goes the story to its rather ambiguous and frightful close. Read the story here at Stirring.

On "Enemies, a Love Story," by Isaac Bashevis Singer *****

Singer's novel reminded me of why I like fiction, and that is not a small feat. As I've gotten older, I've found myself more and more drawn to nonfiction. I think that is because nonfiction seems somehow more important or pertinent to me. But when I return to books for rereading, it is almost always a fictional work, not nonfiction. Why is that the case? And why does so much fiction, in my older years, fail to impress?

I think that is because a lot of contemporary fiction seems to be simply that: a story. And I want to walk away from a book with more than a story. I good book makes me think (and most nonfiction does that) or it makes me feel (some fiction does that); a truly great book makes me do both.

Singer's book was more one for thinking. But it was also great storytelling. The plot revolves around a man with three wives. The setting is post-World War II New York. Herman Broder has survived the Holocaust by hiding out in a hayloft. The woman who sheltered him--his family's former servant--is now his wife. We get the sense, as the novel continues, that Broder married her more from duty than desire (though early on this isn't necessarily as clear). Broder also has a mistress, another Holocaust survivor. This woman gets pregnant at one point and insists on marriage. Beyond that, there's Broder's former wife, who apparently did not die in the concentration camps as he had been led to believe: she's resurfaced. How Broder keeps these plates spinning is truly engaging.

But along the way, we also wrestle with what it means to exist and to have faith and to love. Interestingly, Broder's servant wife, Yadwiga, grows more religious as the novel progresses, becoming Jewish (giving up Catholicism). This, at times, even infects Broder, who wishes to return to his faith. But in a world where "all the good Jews" were killed (that is, the ones faithful to Torah and their beliefs), faith in God no longer seems to make much sense. Try as Broder might, he can't bring himself any longer to do what is right.

Of course, Broder was never a saint to begin with. He treated his first wife awful and took little concern in his family. So in a sense, we also are watching a man trying to reform--and failing--which is itself rather fascinating and sad. Also amazing is to see how these three women--and how much these three women--love this man, even at great cost to themselves. Unable to choose, Broder contributes to the ruin of each of their lives.

On "The Divorce Party" by Deenah Vollmer (713 words) ****

All the old cliches are here but made new because in Vollmer's world, the reception occurs when the marriage is over rather than when it begins. It's a strange way to look at a relationship--or the end of one. And certainly, I suppose, there may be some truth to it, the idea of new beginnings mixed with that tinge of sadness at the end of other things. One will miss marriage as one misses singlehood. If only our lives didn't become so entwined that such splits weren't more angst driven. But then again, among those who have been married six times (as with a person I recently met), maybe one gets used to such things. Read the story here at Volume 1 Brooklyn.