Live Your Life & Other Stories

n her second book of stories, Live Your Life & OTher Stories, Kerry Langan explores, through characters drawn from academe and the wider world, the myths that unconsciously shape our behavior and our sense of possibility-and what happens when, in an unguarded moment, an unforseen circumstance, we catch a defining glimpse of who we actually are. In the first section, Live Your Life!, an unemployed philosophy major fresh from college tries to live out his utopia; a teenage telemarketer learns success is more than cold calls and sales volume; a jilted groom stumbles into a full life; a hair dresser and single mother discovers freedom where she least expects it; a soap opera star finally learns where his character ends and he begins. In the stories in A Lonely Virtue, all set in a small college town, a student balances the scales with her seductive teacher; a post-doc on her first job interview unwittingly follows in her mother's footsteps; a competitive professor learns what he has in common with a colleague he scorns; a shy dean discovers courage and his ambitious wife come-uppance. We recognize ourselves in these characters; they cause us to wince and to laugh, and to wonder what myths we may be blindly living by-and what surprises await us if we open our eyes.