Bianco's debut collection takes readers through the lives of ten individuals who, at first glance, hold in common a string of resolve. Bianco takes readers into the lives of brothers, friends, and loners with a ghostly yet fulfilling narration of each life. Upon entry into the tense world of the first short story, in which a man scarfing tarts while driving gets caught up in a potential altercation with a truck driver, readers may expect that the worst will befall these characters. But in stories like “The Monroes”—a coming-of-age beauty about a friendship between two families of different classes in the 1970s—Bianco demonstrates how closely related we are, how our individual experiences reveal greater species-wide truths. In each humane piece, as Bianco’s characters process loss, time, loneliness, and memory, readers will find more comfort than heartache.

Bianco's approach is, in each crisply told story, to focus first on incidents rather than the protagonist experiencing them, and then building up to an affecting climatic summation. From “Dot,” a sweeping examination of an Ohio woman’s life from 4H to computer programming to divorce from a man who wanted a less ambitious wife: "She somehow survived without anger or regret, and without once considering herself remarkable or entitled to more than the cards of life dealt her." Often, in stories like “That Hoffman Girl,” Bianco guides the reader to inferring the characters’ feelings, a part of solving the riddle of emotions and memory. Since the people and situations feel so real, and since the storytelling is so skillful, this is a pleasure.

Throughout, Bianco’s people seem to be presenting themselves without qualms, asking us to take them as they are. Yet each story also offers reason to doubt this, to pick at the questions that the narrators seem to prefer to leave un-asked. Bianco writes invitingly of experience, survival, and what we tell ourselves about ourselves.

Takeaway: Resonant stories of life as it’s lived, told with welcome empathy.

Comparable Titles: Ann Beattie, Raymond Carver.

Production grades
Cover: B+
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A-