Ambrotypes

"We are all slightly askew," says one of the characters in this delightful and moving collection of innovative stories that bend, at times, toward allegory. Here's a vintage world of cigarette vending machines, Jazzercise, Sears photography studios, McNally road maps, full-service filling stations, and Green Stamps dish sets, a world where a sister with sugar for shoes desires an octopus lover, giraffes give funeral eulogies, a teacher with a backpack wormhole that houses Einstein, and a wo...