Julie Orringer is the real thing, a breathtaking chronicler of the secrets and cruelties underneath the surface of middle-class American life. These are terrific stories-wise, compassionate and haunting.

My main reader was my wife Sheila, and I haven't written a lot since she died.

I've never been able to sleep very much, even when I was a kid. I used to hate being forced to lay in bed in the darkness, and just shifting in bed and staring at the shadows.

Here is the door of my mom's house, well-remembered childhood portal. Here is the yard, and a set of wires that runs from the house to a wooden pole, and some fat birds sitting together on the wires, five of them lined up like beads on an abacus.

It is not like a premonition of death. It is as if she died a long time ago, and she just now remembered it.

I think we're always in some ways writing to the teachers who gave us early love.

In the end, there probably isn't much difference between being in love and acting like you're in love.