Frederick Barthelme's wry and wonderful stories have given us a stunning, cautionary, funny, sometimes bleak, and often transcendent portrait of contemporary life in the sprawl of suburban America. Barthelme made his remarkable debut with these tender and affectionate stories, most of which were ori[...]
A New York Times Notable Book for 2000
The Law of Averages collects twenty-nine stories that rattle around in the fertile field of ordinary life in America; they embrace the plain, the drab, and the dull with the same warmth as the miraculous and exquisite. These sharp and touching stori[...]