IN COMMUNITY LIFE, a short story by Lorrie Moore, a woman librarian looks around and realises that compared with her boyfriend’s social group, her friends are all a bit wonky. They say sour things in quiet voices and make terrible wardrobe decisions. They are “delicate and territorial, intellectual, and physically unwell” but, writes Moore, “these were the people she liked: the kind you couldn’t really live with”. She might be describing her characters in general, who, even when they do find someone to live with, tend to wince at everything they say and then show them up in public.
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