Variations on a Theme

“I always try to make my characters overlap in some areas, in order to call attention to the places where they differ.” These eleven pieces reveal their multilayered and opposing personalities. In “Cottonmouths,” during a smoldering Florida summer, a mother and daughter are both pregnant when the yearly snakes “crawl out of the marshes,” as the two women pick grapefruit for the harvest. There is a fierce sense of place, which informs all of Moore’s work, as well as a recurring search for home that will remind some readers of the work of Jesmyn Ward (a fan of Moore’s writing). Moore says, “My collection is a love letter to the Black South.”

Continuing her familiar wry, self-referential style (see her recent memoir about her ex’s affair with her BFF), Pittard’s latest includes this great line from the protagonist’s boyfriend on learning his girlfriend’s ex has penned an unflattering portrait of them in his forthcoming novel: “‘Writers,’ he said with not a little bit of disgust…”  From there we follow ‘Hana P.’ as she sinks into a midlife crisis and finds herself utterly transformed. A funny book about marriage, literature, desire, freedom, and much more, set among an extended family in Kentucky. Warning, cats are involved. As Nora Ephron famously quoted her mother saying, “Everything is copy.”