The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old

The Lonely Young and the Lonely Old is a collection of quiet and brutal jewels. Told in the words of an unnamed narrator, each story gives voice to the easily dismissed: the lonely high school student, the elderly widower, the pining woman in her twenties, and the worn-down mother in her mid-thirties. Each speaks from the center of an almost paralyzed intensity, desperately searching for articulation and belonging.

And there are others: neglected children who escape into the woods from their...