Margaret Lives in the Basement

Michelle Berry's second collection of eleven stories confirms and extends the talent of an exciting and wonderfully original literary voice. Compelling for all their sheen of innocence, these stories are seamed with subtle alloys of unexpected darkness. Whether it is a young couple desperately trying to communicate on a duck-hunting trip, a discharged soldier shoring up his guilt over a gang rape, a neurotic suburban housewife trying to remove a corpse from her garden, or a lonely woman with a tanning booth in her basement apartment, Berry's stories sparkle with engagement and pull the reader into ordinary situations that always surprise and subvert our expectations. With wit, Berry probes the absurdities of normalcy and the frailties of middle-class mores to uncover obsession, dysfunction, denial, and alienation--and yet finally offers us a quriky optimism that pleases.