“I’ve started to think of Earth as a wax cylinder; the sun the needle, laid on the land and drawing out the day’s music—the sound of people arguing, cooking, laughing, singing, moaning, crying, flirting. And behind that, a silent sweep of millions of sleeping people, washing across the Earth like static.”

This collection starts off pretty slow and gentle, and for the most part stays that way, telling the stories of ordinary people and mostly ordinary happenings. As such, I found myself quite surprised about halfway through about how thoroughly I had been sucked in, and how much I was enjoying myself.

Part of what sets this collection of stories apart from others I’ve read is that each story comes in a pair, which are linked by across time by a location, an object, a theme, inviting you to see and understand them from different perspectives. I also enjoyed the overall mood of the collection. Plenty of sad things happen, but there’s a gentle and poetic sense about the writing. Life goes on.

My favorite stories were “Graft,” which tells the story of a woman called Hope who grew up in and worked around apple orchards and found herself left with a son she couldn’t support, and “The Journal of Thomas Thurber,” the account of a man working at a logging camp leading up to a terrible mystery of which the reader is already aware. But it was definitely hard to pick a favorite, because I really liked nearly all of them.

I will want to reread these stories, I am sure, and will be sure to acquire my own copy soon enough.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review.