B. D. Love writes eloquently of troubled lives and troubled loves, capturing as well as anyone writing today the ways in which we both crave and fear intimacy. Two practical-joking school friends betray each other; a man battles his pitifully irascible neighbors; a professor grows infatuated with an immigrant B-girl; a grieving widow becomes obsessed with helping a homeless man; two Vietnamese students learning English struggle with Swift's "A Modest Proposal"—Love's stories illuminate those critical moments when, suddenly, we can save another's sanity and dignity, when we most urgently feel our human commitment to each other. Punch Line is a beautiful collection from a contemporary master.

Jay Rogoff, author of Venera and The Art of Gravity