Stories - Commitment, Marriage, Responsibility, Boredom, Detachment.
In his new collection of stories Richard Ford gives more attention to the Seventh Commandment than is given in any book since Madame Bovary. Malcontents all across North America - whether in a Montreal hotel lobby or on the crowded hall of Grand Central Station - seek meaning and permanence beyond the desire that entrapped them in the first place.
Ford's philanderers are as diverse as his geographies. On the ski slopes of Michigan, a white-trash ex-husband assaults his rich in-law. Outside New Orleans, a teenager goes duck-hunting with the father that abandoned his family the year before to live with another man. In suburban Connecticut, a young wife glibly confesses to her husband her one-night stand with the host of the party they were about to attend. In a Phoenix conference centre, two estate agents initiate a tryst that ends in tragedy. Only a storyteller as agile as Richard Ford could tackle so many situations offered by a theme as old as Love itself.
