Short stories, a university press with probably no marketing budget. Two strikes against commercial success. So I suppose it should be no surprise I found Kerry Neville Bakken's NECESSARY LIES eleven years after publication. And I was initially drawn to the book mostly because it's cover displayed a laudatory blurb from the late Frederick Busch, who is one of my favorite writers. Intrigued, I bought it.

And I was not disappointed. Because my God, what a talent this young woman has! For portraying the kind of bond that exists between siblings - between brother and sister ("The Effects of Light"), between sisters ("Vigil") - and the myriad difficulties of maintaining a marriage and staying in love ("The Body/Love Problem" and "The Renters Guide to the Hamptons"). And there is that ticking biological clock and the yearning for motherhood ("Eggs" and, to a certain extent, the title story). And there is the awful angst of being thirteen in the achingly accurate portrayal of Gina, who keeps that "Vigil," fearfully observing the changes in her older sister and her mother in the aftermath of a painful divorce.

These are all things one can't help but notice in these beautifully wrought, sometimes funny, sometimes achingly painful stories. But here's a line that grabbed me, probably because I'm old, and know something about aging and loss. It's an almost throwaway description by narrator Mike, of his mother-in-law, in "Necessary Lies." Here it is -

"Jean clung to all memorabilia with fierce determination ... her husband was dead, her only child married, most of her friends had long since moved to Coral Gables, and I had recently buried her senile Chihuahua in the flower bed out back beneath a cluster of marigolds."

Yes. Losses become central as one gets older. As one whose parents are gone, whose children are all married and moved away. As one who has two beloved dogs buried out back beneath the grapevine, this passage stopped me in my tracks.

So yeah. Besides all the obvious stuff, there's the little stuff too, the details. But enough. I. LOVED. THIS. BOOK. Very highly recommended.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER ( )

Great Book. A series of short stories about real life topics and how they play out on a person/families emotions in a realitic manner. ( )