In her first story collection, Five Tuesdays in Winter, novelist Lily King (Writers and Lovers; Euphoria) introduces characters with the familiar attributes readers appreciate from her, in 10 stories of love and longing, coming-of-age and declining, friendship and families.
King's stories are hopeful. In "When in the Dordogne," a sheltered 14-year-old boy--sure he was "a martini baby" and "a deep inconvenience" to his late-in-life parents--gains new perspectives from the two college boys house-sitting with him during the summer they travel to Europe. "Creature" finds a 14-year-old protagonist hired as a live-in nanny in one of her town's "fancier houses." When her innocence is compromised, she draws on her wit and newfound self-confidence.
In the surrealistic and darkly funny "The Man at the Door," a nursing mother is trying to focus on writing her novel when a "familiar stranger" bangs on her door, claiming he's from her publisher. His mysterious intrusion takes bizarre twists as she gains control of his visit and her life. Books and writing figure in several entries. The titular story's divorced bookseller, by nature "reticent" according to his ebullient 12-year-old daughter, Paula, is quietly smitten with his part-time employee, sure she would rebuke his advances. Paula's positive nature steers the course of the story to its heartwarming ending.
Even in stories with strife and conflict--a child shunning her newly widowed mother, an octogenarian visiting his comatose granddaughter--love and hope prevail. When each of the 10 tales ends, the next one begs to be read, as King's crisply descriptive prose and optimistic perspective guarantee a richly rewarding experience. --Cheryl McKeon, Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, N.Y.