Herb's Pajamas
Stories
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Linked stories of four lonely city dwellers by the New York Times–bestselling author of A Three Dog Life: "A gem" (The Village Voice).
"A lonely hermit, a dead cobbler, a teenage runaway, and a fifty-four-year-old virgin star in this . . . collection of poignant short stories set on New York's Upper West Side. In concise, deft prose, Thomas interweaves tales of ordinary people coping with urban malaise. The first piece describes Walter, a sci-fi writer, pondering the value of his existence after his wife walks out. After Walter is cheered up by Mexican rooftop singers, the narrative shifts to his troubled neighbor, Edith. An overweight, sexually frustrated woman, Edith's unusual antics include pocketing her dying mother's jewelry and leaving flowers in the trash for a homeless woman. As Edith and Walter come to grips with their loneliness, the chaotic New York milieu is a vital force invigorating their lives. After a fourteen-year old runs away in search of her older sister in the penultimate story, the collection ends with an adulteress struggling to move her dead lover's body, still clad in her husband's pajamas. In portraying each of her four characters, Thomas captures the subtle details of city life with elegance, flair, wit, and comic timing." —Boston Review
"Thomas has a way with details that makes for endings as bittersweet as her beginnings." —Publishers Weekly
"An entertaining, cohesive, and well-written volume." —Booklist
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The four lonely Upper West Siders who inhabit this muted but moving collection of 18 related short stories have each lost something and want it back. Middle-aged Walter's wife has left him, and he can't come to terms with her desire merely to be his friend. Edith, "a trembly maiden of 52" who has never seen a man naked, yearns to connect but doesn't know how, while her neighbor, the widowed, aging Belle, finds her own lover, "the sweetest man who ever lived," dead in the kitchen and must dispose of his body. The most appealing character is the protagonist of "Bunny's Sister," a gently drawn account of a 14-year-old's journey to find her runaway sibling, who disappeared one day after announcing: "I'm smoke." Along the way, we gradually come to understand that Bunny has known all along how her journey will end, and that makes her sadness sharper for the reader. Although the carefully chronicled minor events that make up these stories don't always amount to much on their own, Thomas (An Actual Life) has a way with details that makes for endings as bittersweet as her beginnings.
