New York Lonely

"In her collection of short stories, New York Lonely, Rochelle Ratner has vividly rendered lives in snapshots from a camera that captures the inner details as sharply as the outer ones. There’s a richness in these tales composed of ironies and elegies, humor and unspeakable grief—as well as a grief that has learned how to speak, and when to remain silent as a presence in the room. Consider: a young woman measures her unfolding relationship to her new boyfriend through a kitten he introduces to the reigning household cat, Delilah; a man intent on buying a car ends up trading in his wife; a dating service run by shrinks for the benefit of their clients; high school friends gathered at the funeral of a classmate who served in Iraq wonder about their lives as they examine old photos; a man selected for jury duty attempts to get close to a woman in the pool; a butcher talks about the world as he sees it through the eyes of one who kills and butchers chickens; a woman in a Greenwich Village restaurant with the price tag dangling from her sweater, becomes the subject of an imaginative rumination; and a woman still in the hospital recovering from a hysterectomy watches a TV soap about a woman who has delivered a still-born fetus. New York Lonely is both a testament and a summation. In the end, the generosity of spirit and compassion familiar to all who knew her, hold the richness of the work like water in cupped hands." —Paul Pines