Two Nurses, Smoking: Stories

by David Means

A new collection of stories by David Means, a visionary "master of the form" (The Observer).

David Means is one of the best storytellers of our time. Having earned comparisons to Flannery O’Connor, Raymond Carver, Alice Munro, and Denis Johnson, he has spent a lifetime honing a unique vision and has gained a devoted international readership. Two Nurses, Smoking is the fullest expression yet of the themes of trauma, hope, love, and despair that have defined his work across five acclaimed collections and the novel Hystopia.

In the Covid era, these stories of survival and healing in the midst of loss, grief, and isolation offer us catharsis, compassion, and wisdom. Two nurses stand alone together in a hospital parking lot, smoking and speaking tenderly to each other. A dachshund raises her nose and catches the scent of her former owner in the wind one afternoon. A woman with an intense phobia of water appears on the Hudson River in a red kayak. On the porch of a mental hospital, two friends talk about a ball of lightning. A couple who met in a bereavement group in a church basement stand reunited at the bottom of a ski slope. Always original, always arresting, Means' ingenious stories build around intimate moments to form an expansive sense of what it means to be fully human.

“Vows,” included here, was awarded a Pushcart Prize. Other stories have been celebrated by Jesmyn Ward, who featured “Clementine, Carmalita, Dog,” in Best American Short Stories 2021, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who selected the title story for the O. Henry Prize, writing that it “left me weeping.”

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Contemporary, Short Story Collection, Anthologies

224 pages, Hardcover

First published September 13, 2022

About the author

David Means is an American short story writer and novelist based in Nyack, New York. His stories have appeared in many publications, including Esquire, The New Yorker, and Harper's. They are frequently set in the Midwest or the Rust Belt, or along the Hudson River in New York.

Reviews

[Royce · Rating 4 out of 5]

“In an average life lived by a relatively average soul, what else remains but singular moments of astonishingly framed light?” This quote is taken from the last sentence of the short story, “Vows,” included in the short story collection, “Two Nurses, Smoking.” The short stories in this collection evoke feelings of deep sorrow, yet they are so incredibly well-written, it is impossible to stop reading them. Of the ten stories in the collection, “Clementine, Carmelita, Dog,” “Two Nurses, Smoking,” and “Vows” are my favorite ones. “Clementine, Carmelita, Dog,” is told from the dog’s perspective on losing his human mother. It is told in the most beguiling way, I don’t think I have ever read such a story presented this way. And, I really liked it! “Two Nurses” recounts the “love” affair between two nurses. “Vows” describes the complicated relationship of a long-married couple. Both stories convey the complex and uneasy relationships of those who have been together for many years. These stories may not lift your spirits, but rather paint a clear picture of how “an average life is lived,” and if we, as readers are lucky, “singular moments of astonishingly framed light.” Highly recommend these stories.

[Cherise Wolas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've only ever read Means' stories in magazines and to rectify that I've begun to read his collections. These ten stories are incredibly special, often beginning with small scenes, happenstance encounters between people - the titular two nurses at an upstate NY hospital who meet on their smoke breaks, the man and woman who connect in a support group for parents who have lost their children, the author is present too and I wondered, though have not investigated, to what degree these stories may or may not have elements of autobiography. The first story won me over entirely and I do not well up when I read, and I did well up reading, "Clementine, Carmelita, Dog." What I loved as well is the authorial intelligence at work here, at the sentence level as well, questioning both the limitations and possibilities of literature. Marvelous.

[Janelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5stars. Most of these stories are about grief or loss and the small special moments in life. I found it very readable and enjoyed the writing style, with the standout story for me being the title story about two damaged people building a relationship over conversations during their breaks.

[Aaron Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first dive into David Means. In the last couple years I have been trying to catch up with the best contemporary short story writers after so many years of letting my reading be prejudiced in favor of novels. This truly is a lovely collection and Means' reputation is well deserved. Meditative, soulful and enchanting, there is so much pain and feeling pulsating through its pages. A number of the stories focus on loss and grief and I thought they were very insightful and moving. This is literature at its finest and a perfect exemplification of what short stories can do.

[Aden · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of these stories were excellent and some were forgettable. Thus, this book gets that weird 3 star rating. The jumping in quality was wild to me, it caught me off guard. Some almost made me cry they were so meaningful, while others made me skim lines because I was bored. This was a weird, melancholy collection. I don’t know how I feel.

[Randi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh… first half not good. Second half better. Some stories provoked a lot of thought, emotion, and were compelling. Others were painfully boring.

[David W. Cofer · Rating 1 out of 5]

I love short story collections and have read many of them. However, this collection of stories was the worst I’ve ever read. The book contains ten stories, most of which center on grief and loss.

Two major issues I had with the writing was the overly long sentences, that ran on and on and on, seemingly forever. One or two now and then to break the pace is fine, but there were too many in this book. Secondly, the overuse of parenthesis was annoying and irritating. Again, when used sparingly, they are fine and often necessary, but the reader does not need several on the same page.

Based upon the title, “Two Nurses, Smoking,” and some hype surrounding the book, I though all the stories centered around the two nurses swapping stories while on a smoke break. But that was not the case. “Two Nurses, Smoking” was simply the title of the third story in the book. Often, a collection of short stories is titles after one of the stories, but usually either the first or last story, or the strongest story in the collection. That was not the case here. This story was certainly not the strongest. This was a boring story of two nurses swapping stories and then falling in love with each other.

The stories were inane and many made no sense at all. In “Clementine, Carmelita, Dog” we have a story about a dog that becomes separated from his owner and lost in the woods for several days after chasing a rabbit. Eventually, the dog encounters a man who takes him home and becomes his new owner. After a period of time, while out in the woods, the dog picks up the scent of his previous owner and goes to him. OK, what’s the point here?

In “Are You Experienced?” we have a story of a guy who steals money from his uncle and then prattles on and on about it.

“Vows” tells a story of a couple who each cheated on the other one, but later renewed their wedding vows and lived happily ever after until the wife died.

“Lightning Speaks” is a dumb story of two kids just getting high over and over. The story goes nowhere.

“The Red Dot” is a story of a man who drowned while swimming. Ironically his wife was, at one point, scared of water. So scared, she hated taking a bath.

“I Am Andrew Wyeth” tells the story of an artist who has a woman sign a non-disclosure agreement.

“First Encounters” tells the story of a man’s daughter who gets depressed and starts taking drugs after her boyfriend dies in a automobile collision.

“Stopping Distance” is a story of a couple that meet in a bereavement group, date and then get married. I cannot tell you how boring this story was, and it was the longest story of the collection.

Finally, “The Depletion Prompts” is perhaps the most interesting chapter, and is not a story at all, but a list of writing prompts. The prompts are rather detailed and would be useful to a writer stuck for ideas. However, the author (despite including them in the book), says he does not like writing prompts as they restrict the writer to a narrow box in which one is constrained to write the story from the prompt.

I cannot recommend this book at all and am glad I got it for free from my library.

[John Stepper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some stories I did not “get” and some I liked. But some are seared into my memory, haunting me in the best possible way.

The title story and “Stopping Distance” are two such stories. Original and poignant and oh so human. The kind of stories you can read again and savor, discovering new subtleties and insights. Wonderful.

[Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some stories I liked, some were only so so. (None were bad at least)

I'm never sure with short stories if you're supposed to read them one at a time, spaced out widely over the course of months or what. At least in this case David Means' tics -- especially his formal tricks and stylized narrative moves -- came through in a way I would describe as ... a little tedious? Maybe predictable? Lots of big announced time jumps (typically backward i.e.: "wait we have to go back to..."), lots of characters telling stories within the stories themselves ("at least that's what she said he said..."), lots of formal tics like lists or sections (or in the case of the last story in the collection, explicit "prompts"). Topical preoccupations like marital infidelity and divorce ... and thematic reflexes like references to the river and the sky. None of which are bad or wrong per se, but when you see them all back-to-back-to-back-to-back they do less and less to surprise you as a reader, or to make you think. Instead of the story, you think about David Means doing another one of his classic Means Moves. Maybe it's intentional, for a decently "meta" kind of writer, who knows.

All that said, there's great writing in here, and a couple of the stories were awesome.

[Kathleen Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intriguing collection of 1o stories that are as much about language as they are about characters. There's no link here, except that the stories are all a bit melancholy. Two Nurses is very much series of anecdotes while Clementine etc. is the story of a dog's life, told by the dog. There's homelessness and grief. Some of it is overwritten yet others are spare. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Read these one at a time. For fans of literary fiction.

[Sidik Fofana · Rating 5 out of 5]

SIX WORD REVIEW: Divine formal experiments. Love "First Encounter".

[Olivia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love authors with the name David that write essays!!

[Jeff · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have read quite a few of these stories before, mostly in The New Yorker but certainly reading them in collection form is a different experience. Overall this story set did not work for me that well. I have wide experience with the form and appreciate almost all types and techniques but if found some of Means writing to be a combination of meandering, repetitive, and flowery that surprisingly did not work as well as I might have expected

I had read “ Clementine, Carmelita, Dog” previously and appreciated the story. Written by a human narrator who tells us he is doing his best to write from a dogs point of view and describing those perceptions this story tells the tale of a lost dog. It works quite well.

“ Are you experienced “ views a 16 year old girl in a relationship with a boy a couple of years older. A boy already going down the road to a life of trouble. She accompanies him to his elderly Uncle’s house where he plans to find a money box that is “ just sitting there as his uncle won’t spend the money.” He gets his uncle talking to distract him and they actually leave the man talking to himself as they depart with the money. The story ends with her watching her boyfriend talk about how he will use the money and she sees him in the future, old like his Uncle, talking about his past while another set of young people steal from him.

The title story “ Two Nurses Smoking “ follows just that, a male and female nurse developing a relationship as they take smoke breaks together over a period of months. Has one of the oddest visuals I’ve seen in a story. When the two have sex he sees her hand stimulating herself in such a way that that the turned, shaky hand, reminds him of an elderly woman he killed in Iraq, a story that he then confesses to her.

“ Vows “ is one of the lengthier stories in the set and it is effective. A man recalls his relationship with his wife. He is narrating this from his old age. He recalls their marriage, the ceremony that they were too keyed up to enjoy. Later after each had an affair, they renew their vows. He realizes the cows mean little by themselves. In time, however they grow into a better love. Lastly he tells us of his great sorrow when she passes years later from an illness. The story has an exceptional end sentence however. One that has little to do with the preceding story but is just so true in many ways. He writes “ In an average life lived by a relatively average soul, what else remains but singular moments of astonishingly framed light.” For me, a person who is constantly observing the moon and stars, the early morning, the late evening light, the golden hour this rings true. Elizabeth Strout in one of her Lucy Barton stories has a character speak of the light that changes in February and it is, for those who stop to notice these light changes through the year a significant marking of time.

The next story “ Lightning Speaks “ did not work for me in anyway. It was muddy, told in confusing voice and person and I did not read it through.

Many of these stories are set in the cities and towns in the Hudson River Valley. In “ The Red Dot “ a man tells of a notable figure in his town, Karl , a local restaurant owner who died while swimming in the river. Previous to that though he and his wife had gone through a messy divorce. Karl has told the story of his wife’s terrible fear of water and then his later seeing her canoeing in the river and his inability to understand which was true.

“ I Am Andrew Wyeth” is one of a couple of stories in the collection told by a person who narrates a story about his last while acknowledging they now are being treated for mental illness. In this one an artist recalls his hiring an assistant and explaining why he has her sign a non disclosure agreement. He also tells of now he models his behaviors, his paintings, his whole persona actually on duplicating Andrew Wyeth.

In “ First Encounter “ a man speaks of his troubled teenage daughter. Drugs and mental illness and he and his wife’s diligent efforts to help her. The daughter witnesses him kissing his assistant and then at the hospital one night tells him she has to tell her Mother. He asks her not to, and she does not. In fact when she wakes up she does not seem to remember at all. But, of course, it comes back to her, and once that story is told, his life falls apart. Another story told from the future looking back.

“ Stopping Distance “ works well, a meaningful story. Told in what seems to be a Means trademark, in short paragraphs it follows two people in a grief support group of people whose children have died. Not an easy subject but he does a good job showing this man whose daughter was struck by a car and a woman whose son was killed in a skiing accident, showing how their relationship develops. Eventually we see them married living a life that it sometimes seems a marvel that they have found any level of peace at all. It is true, people never forget, but many can still live and enjoy a life, even one filled with a bittersweet sadness constant on the edge of their vision.

“ The Depletion Prompts “ is a story told in short burst paragraphs,each started with “ Write About.” Our narrator has written a series of prompts about story ideas. Much of this story seems to edge perhaps onto autobiography as he writes of a sister with mental illness problems. A story that, to me, as a person with no right to criticize a professional writer, could have perhaps used a tiny bit of editing.

So as usual when I get to the end of a review that I had given a less than stellar review I think to myself, perhaps it could be a higher rating. There was more positive than I had realized. And while that is true, I am in this case going to stick with the two star. There has to be lesser ratings so other stories have space for higher ones

[Srdjan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jedna od ovih deset priča ima podnaslov The Eros of Grief (Eros tuge), ali to bi mogao biti i alternativni naslov čitave zbirke koja tematizuje Tanatos i Eros, najstarije teme, ili možda jedine teme o kojim se treba pisati.

Oslanjajući se na iskustvo pandemije (iako ovo nije knjiga o COVID-u) i porodične uspomene iz mladosti pisac ispituje osjećanja ljudi koji su doživjeli neki formativan gubitak i njihovu reakciju koja je često u emocionalno-tjelesnom domenu.

Ne znam da li dobacuju baš tako daleko da se mogu opisati kao katarzične, ali priče su dovoljno originalne, stilski i tonom adekvatne i literarno ubjedljive da čitaoca emocionalno angažuju i pruže ozbiljno književno iskustvo.

[Michelle Abramson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book based on a rave review by Jess Walter in the New York Times. While I recognize that the stories are well crafted, they jus didn’t connect with me. Overall, I found the collection tedious and overly academic.

[Emily TarBush · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story collection is uneven, but worth reading for me because of the story "Vows."

[Vivienne Phemister · Rating 3 out of 5]

this is a solid 3.5 star book but i can’t accurately do it on my phone. had higher expectations for the book but the stories that were my favorites really stood out and were exceptional!
my favorites:
- clementine, carmelita, dog
- the red dot
- first encounter
- the depletion prompts

[Blue · Rating 5 out of 5]

made me cry on the caltrain

[Maxine Rogers · Rating 4 out of 5]

1st,5th,6th, and 9th are my favorites

[Nancy Dardarian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved most of these stories

[Tom O’Leary · Rating 5 out of 5]

David Means is truly one of the most original short story writers I have ever read. The first story in this collection, for example, is narrated by a dog. A very entertaining dog. I found these stories enchanting, provocative, moving and soul affirming. Bravo.

[Maya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Honestly I picked this up because of the title which is to be fair a really good title. Some of these stories HIT me and made me so emotional or even cry, while others (the majority?) I found so boring that it was a slog to get through them.

Favorites: “Two Nurses, Smoking,” “Are You Experienced?” and “First Encounter”

[Macken · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two Nurses, Smoking is a collection of short stories all heavily encompassed in grief and melancholic themes. There are some beautifully descriptive and thoughtful moments scattered throughout these stories but overall I could not get into it. Thank you to NetGalley and FSG for the e-ARC.

[Annu · Rating 1 out of 5]

I could not get into this writing style. It felt like I was stuck on an airplane next to someone who just wouldn't stop telling me stories about people they know, but just babbled too fast and gave too much detail. The opening story was the strongest, for the parts of that one trying to describe scent the writing style sort of worked for me, but even then I had trouble focusing as the writing just overwhelming.

[Emily Stepper · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed these, and I'm typically not a short stories person. Author is from Nyack!!

[Weiling · Rating 4 out of 5]

What new thoughts does a short story writer still bring to this genre? Often, the writer pulls a loose thread from a character in one story and (seemingly) carelessly crochets a new story out of it. The intentionally weakened narrative arc evokes moments of déjà vu in the reader's mind. The obsessed readers feel compelled to flip back the pages trying to find that loose thread in a completely different pile of characters, working perhaps against the writer's inclination to depict universal feelings in opaque narratives.

David Means does a little bit of that, if only a little more deliberate in obscuring the characters. Simply "he" and "she," until a name pops out, giving the slightest bump on a climbing wall for the reader to hold on to. As you start to question what exactly the point is to have the vaguely palpable narrator to retell the stories he/she has heard from someone else, often a friend or a family member, the story-writing technique Means uses begins to emerge. Story is both the form and the subject. He tells stories of how people tell stories of others, in the Russian doll style. What is story after all? Not a story or many stories, but "story" the concept. It can appear in the forms of gossip, argument, news, myth, memory, and even epitaph. It comes when someone is ready to tell or listen to it but also at times of unreadiness. It can develop as many editions as the number of people willing to tell the story, sprinkling a little more drama, omitting a few details, or emphatically remembering and repeating the exact words they heard from the previous edition. Sometimes, at crucial times actually, stories are shared through silence when putting them into words will simply fracture the wholeness.

Means's stories are about ordinary people telling stories of their own or someone else's loss of a beloved one, to car crash, accidental drowning, substance abuse, a terminal disease, a revealed truth, a divergent life path, or infidelity. Amid the many "he said's" and "she said's" sounds Marshall McLuhan's words: "the medium is the message." Means's message is that the world is made of cumulative storytelling, no less and no more than that; and that the world of loss accumulates through remembering pain as much as forgetting it (but not nullifying). Relationship of greater depth occurs when people realize they are drawn to the way the others tell a story of agony more than the subject itself. Silence is as much a medium as spoken words, sometimes even thicker than words. From the thickness of tacitly shared silence arises "the eros of grief." For the parties the silence connects, the unspoken is not a void like a black hole, but "a black speck, whatever was left when enough was forgotten." Untamable like a shadow, it stays for the rest of time, occasionally eclipsing the bright spots of memory; the negatives hold more weight than the developed photos.

Story is the space, the act, and the action of reassembling bonds from the fragments and ruins of the ones told or experienced before. It affects a person's world-building with the conscious or subconscious order of telling, planned or unplanned cessation before a twist of plot is revealed, switching life to the next node of its rhizomatic futures. Although the future remains uncertain, in a given context and the familiarity of relationship the interlocutors can almost predict what is going to be said and that prediction materializes the next moment, followed by a sequence of actions that follow the words. Then, one can backtrack the branching life paths to almost see a consistent causality that was apparently unknown to the earlier self but nonetheless seeded in one's interaction with stories and the storyteller at any given crossroad. So does a story. It follows the same nonlinear timeline and spatial sequence, depleting the current moment of its singularity.

[Arya F. Jenkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Means’s 2023 melancholic short story collection Two Nurses, Smoking, features two outstanding stories that have remained memorable--first, the title story about two health workers who grow close as they chat during their smoking breaks which I initially read at the height of the pandemic in The New Yorker, and secondly, “Clementine, Carmelita, Dog,” whose most striking feature is its viewpoint, that of a dog.

Clementine a middle-aged dachshund, gets lost in woods, finds new owners then returns to his original owner. Here, the natural world serves as a gateway to a dog’s explorations, but also as an entry point to a narrative about what it means to be human. It’s a true writer’s story, replete with sensual details. Clementine’s acuity, the narrative makes clear, is not limited to the natural world, but extends also to the human realm: “Even in her excitement over her new home, Carmelita was experiencing a form of grief particular to her species. There are fifty-seven varieties of dog grief, just as there are—from a dog’s point of view—110 varieties of human grief, ranging from a vague gloom of Sunday-afternoon sadness, for example, to the intense, peppery, lost-father grief, to the grief which she was smelling in this new house, which was a lost child (or lost pup) type of grief…”

“Two Nurses, Smoking,” whose initial impact was certainly affected by the timing of my first reading, is a brilliant exploration of the nature of grief and its connecting role in evolving intimacy in a relationship. Here, internal human landscapes, back stories, rather than an actual landscape, are the focus. The story opens with a long view of Gracie and Marlon chatting during a smoke break. They talk about their kidney patients, try to guess their longevity. Beneath their scrubs are scars and clues to their own pasts. Marlon’s scar near his carotid artery becomes the prompt for him to relay his wartime experiences.

Marlon’s and Gracie’s stories are layers to pull back. What lies behind their actual telling and their subtle gestures in the telling are what matter. The nature of intimacy with its pushes, pulls and resistance is beautifully showcased here. Ultimately there is no denying mutual attraction.
When the two find themselves in a motel room after that making love, Marlon makes a confession and cries on Gracie’s shoulder. She pats him gently on the back as a nurse might a baby, a gesture that through time will keep returning her to the question of the origin point of their love.

Ultimately it is as impossible to peg the moment love happens as it is the moment death will come. Both love and death hover with their particular brand of mystery and magic in these two stories in Two Nurses, Smoking, leading the reader through a maze of details to important realizations--love is fragile and death imminent, so we must be careful about our choices.

[Faithe · Rating 4 out of 5]

So, these stories are beautiful and touching, evocative and brilliantly immersive.

Also, I could not stop fixating on the absurdly long run-on sentences!

For instance:
"All that--the memory of that kitchen in Cleveland and those conversations--was in the past, before her mother died and then, a few years later, her son, but she thought of those particular days--the warmth of the kitchen, the exact smell of the floor wax, something called Future, and then she thought about how her mother's death had, for a while, opened a sense of taking a step forward in the timeline, but then her son died and reconfigured the order, destabilized everything, and in this destabilized state she began to understand her mother in a different way, to see that she, too, had found a way to continue on after her father's sudden death--a job at the airport-an arena of transition, fixed in place behind the counter while others moved around her, taking pleasure in the smallest of tasks, neatening stacks of newspapers, listening to the conversations of others." (pp. 180-181)

Or this:
"Much later he'd see that in the withholding he had found some hope; she had foreseen the moment when he would share it with her away from the others, passing it like a chalice, sealing the bond that was forming, and he knew it was only an imagined relationship that had formed, glancing over at her, catching a glimpse of her lovely face: narrow and austere with thin, pale lips and a high, freckled brow that seemed enhanced by the way her hair, a brown so deep it was almost red, was pulled back, charged with winter static, loose and curling around her ears, which, when he got close to her during coffee time, looked small, delicate, shell-like when she leaned forward to take a cup, exposing to him for the first time, as the collar of her shirt tightened against it, the long, delicate elegance of her neck." (pp. 167-168)

Or:
"They were at a restaurant called the Red Hat, seated outside on the patio, overlooking the river, thirty miles from his house, and it was midsummer, and the candles flickered in a warm breeze off the water, and Manhattan twenty miles downstream was a quivering glob of light in the heat past the pearled beads of the bridge, and the subject had risen up out of the small talk, out of the easeful laughter, and it made that moment--she'd think much later--somehow even more profound, something they'd both remember as formative." (pp. 168-169)

It’s hard to explain, but these things are both true: I loved these stories, AND (I’m sorry but) I wish an editor had reigned him in a little, for the sake of reader comprehension. What can I say?

[Norman Birnbach · Rating 5 out of 5]

The stories in David Means latest collection, "Two Nurses, Smoking" are inventive and often deconstructed. By that, I mean that they often tell a story about characters in indirect ways.

One of my favorites in this collection, "The Depletion Prompts" uses writing prompts -- the cue setting an issue for a writer to use spark a story, poem or essay -- that are increasingly specific to tell a story about the writer and his sister. As the story progresses, the prompts become ever more specific, starting with "Write about that night, long ago, when you lay in bed listening to the sound of wind buzzing through the old television aerial mounted on the porch outside your bedroom," which is fairly specific but is also generic enough compared to the next prompt: "Write about the way that, one summer afternoon, your older sister, Meg, disappeared." (This is not much of a spoiler; it's in the second paragraph.)

I also really liked the title story. The third person narrator tells the story of two nurses, who spend their breaks together, smoking and talking, but always from a distance. The story is broken into short fragments that provide insight into the characters. There's no real plot in this story (just as there isn't in "The Depletion Prompts") but we still learn about the characters, always at a distance.

I did not like "Stopping Distance" as much, the longest story in the collection. It is about grief, particularly parental grief, but not because I don't think it's a compelling story. I generally don't like children-in-peril stories in movies and TV shows because often they seem to be a cheap trick to pull at our heartstrings. That's not the case here. The theme of "Stopping Distance" is stated in its first line: "Grief takes as long as it wants, in various formations, and doesn't follow rules the way we'd like to think it does." Which is true enough. The pain the two protagonists feel is rendered accurately and I felt their discomfort and unhappiness and guilt. In that respect, Means achieves what he sets out to do. But I did think it went on longer than it needed to. And the raw emotions were hard to take -- but that may just be my take on it.

Overall, these stories had a different flow, shape and texture. Means seems to have set out with a challenge for himself in each story, one of which is how to tell it from an indirect way. These stories require the reader to put together puzzles -- the things the narrators tell us and the things they leave out.

I look forward to reading more of his work.