A "delicately eccentric" collection of stories from the National Book Critics Circle Award–winning author of Binocular Vision (Publishers Weekly).

"Put [Pearlman's] stories besides those of John Updike and Alice Munro. That's where they belong." —Ann Patchett, author of Bel Canto

Spanning no fewer than four countries in sixty years, the sixteen buoyant, brilliantly constructed stories in this award-winning volume flesh out the myriad complexities of people who, at first glance, live unremarkable lives.

Widowers, old men, estranged spouses, young restaurant workers, career women and Jewish grandmothers are all at the center of Pearlman's cool, studied observations. Each character is rendered with such unpredictable intricacy that they often astonish themselves just as much as the reader. Many of the stories either begin or wind their way back to one, mythical, two-by-three-mile Massachusetts town—Godolphin, a place that "called itself a town but was really a leafy wedge of Boston."

"Her writing is intelligent, perceptive, funny and quite beautiful . . . Pearlman's view of the world is large and compassionate, delivered through small, beautifully precise moments." —Roxana Robinson, The New York Times Book Review