The diversity of subject matter in the 20 stories in Ron Hansen's She Loves Me Not is remarkable. He writes in different voices, faithfully rendering the broken English of a priest who is a native Polish speaker in "My Communist" and the offhand conversational tone of a scullery maid in the English countryside of horse and carriage days in "The Governess."
He can also recount the most mundane conversations perfectly. In "Can I Just Sit Here for a While?" Hansen introduces Rick Bozack, a crackerjack salesman who loves his work, enjoys the motel rooms with their "bolted-down color TV topped with cellophane-wrapped peppermints... the coffee thermos... the sweat on his ice-water glass.... What were they feeding everybody about the hard life on the road? You'd have to be zonkers not to love it."
When Rick and two friends go to a basketball game together, clichés fly as the three men talk about "testing the waters," "put it on the back burner," "get a better lay of the land." The conversation is absolutely authentic, skimming the surface of what all three are really thinking about.
Ranging over subjects as different as Oscar Wilde in Omaha and a poignant vignette about dementia, or two damaged people possibly finding love and the important lesson in a sparrow's flight and murder, Hansen shapes the short story genre to his own ends again and again. His literary expertise, his craftsmanship and his profound insight into what people are capable of are refined to perfection in each of these stories. --Valerie Ryan, Cannon Beach Book Company, Ore.