Spare, precise, elegantly structured if not always appealing. When you're a little tired of "edgy," "innovative," "pushing the envelope," elaborately dark and/or laboriously aspiring to amusing or imaginative, Pearlman's meticulously observed tales of ordinary people are a palate-cleanser. Pearlman's first collection of short stories was published when she was sixty, and it is refreshing to this older writer to see stories that reflect some actual life experience of growing up, of aging, of long marriages, even - maybe - wisdom. This collection is worth reading if only for four stories: Castle 4, Puck, Assisted Living, and (my favorite) Wait and See. Four winners, four stars. RIP, Ms Pearlman. ( )

Such a disappointment after really liking Binocular Vision. This book repulsed me, and I was pleased to stop reading it a little more than halfway through. ( )

I love how pearlman takes a slice of life in her short stories and shines a light on one small moment to reflect on the true "Predicaments of being human".

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Wonderful collection. Many of these stories take place in the same community and one or two characters recur from story to story. Ms. Pearlman has a terrific ear for the odd living among the normal and for the tragedy of the ordinary. ( )

In Edith Pearlman's back-flap author bio, she's described as "a New Englander by both birth and preference." I'm neither of these, although I live in New England, but I still resonated with Pearlman's stories, perhaps because Pearlman doesn't write with an unabashed love for the region. She writes about New England almost like one would write about a beloved family member or spouse if one were to write truthfully about the ambivalent feelings that often characterize close relationships. Mostly she's not writing about the region itself but about the people in it, but I'm not sure one can separate these very well, especially in a place with such an established culture (for the United States, at least). Write about one and you're writing about the other.

Although I used to read short stories all of the time, I've been preferring to read novels the past several years. When I go back to short stories, I tend to read those written by my contemporaries or near contemporaries, and I'm frequently irritated with the self-conscious cool that pervades their writing. There's one (or maybe two) in this collection that leave things gratuitously vague like the stories of my nearer age-mates, but the vast majority are tightly woven and purposeful, filled with the true emotion that the best fiction evokes.

At least one of these stories appears originally to have been published in the 1980's when Pearlman was closer to my age now, and this isn't the vague one, so I'm not sure if the difference is age-related or if it's generational or maybe it's just an individual quality. Whatever it is, I enjoyed reading these stories. They remind me a bit of Alice Munro's stories, but it's been several years since I read Alice Munro, so maybe I'm just making up that similarity.

I like all of the stories in this book, but I especially love "Deliverance," "Blessed Harry," "Castle 4," "Sonny," "Wait and See," and the title story, "Honeydew." If I spent a little more time, I could probably find a common thread that would explain why these stories stand out from the others for me, but it's late, so I'll just leave those titles here and wonder: if I wrote thousands or millions of words, would I be able to create stories like these? Or do they spring from some quality that defies practice? ( )