Amelia Diane Coombs is the author of Keep My Heart in San Francisco; Between You, Me, and the Honeybees; Exactly Where You Need to Be; and All Alone with You. The intricacies of the stories in Alone With You, seemingly easily put together, are also a testament to the acuity of the author’s perception. Shelly spent most of her mornings wandering around their living space in a loosely tied mint-green kimono, her small, freckled breasts winking out from the material as she moved.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of her attitude towards gruesome wounds and her patients in general? So when her guidance counselor drops the bombshell that to score a scholarship she’ll desperately need, her applications require volunteer hours, Eloise is up for the challenge.The impact of these low-key stories surprised me, how the details of their parts built up into that big, often contradictory emotion. She tomd the Truth like you could never dream of telling it, and I pity you, that you could see the inside of your own soul and reduce it like this, so pitylessly. The rep I spoke with over the summer emphasized community involvement, especially for scholarship applicants.

She lay in bed trying to feel different, now that she knew that her parents weren’t her real parents, but she didn’t feel different.It’s just, if someone walked up to me on the street and started talking about communism or socialism, I wouldn’t stop to have a conversation. These stories stand out because of their high tolerance for complexity, never opting for a single note. Variables might change – characters, action, settings, but the central emotion that drew me to an idea in the first place settles on me like a burr.

Henry Prize-winning story “The Visitor,” a VA hospital nurse’s aide contends with a family ghost and discovers the ways in which her own past haunts her. Silver has the signature talent of rendering her fictional inhabitants instantly relatable, in all their imperfections. Mostly she felt the couples should be allowed to adopt, because whatever flaws they had were no worse than the flaws of people who could have children effortlessly, even thoughtlessly, and she knew that children could survive almost anything.

Masso asked the universe how much salt to boil in the water, or whether this vine or that one would provide the sweetest fruit. I started "The God of War" by the same author, and while it is a very interesting story, it lacks the spare, poetic perfection of the short stories. In this elegant, finely wrought new collection, Alone With You, Silver has created eight indelible stories that mine the complexities of modern relationships and the unexpected ways love manifests itself.