"Ladies and Gentlemen: Stories," by Adam Ross

The short story reading continues....I just finished a new collection of stories, each of which burst out and grabbed my attention. The book is "Ladies and Gentlemen: Stories" (Knopf, 2011), by Adam Ross. The stories are gripping and immediate. Most of the narrators are male; reading the stories, I alternated between feeling I was able to get inside the characters' minds, and then suddenly feeling I didn't know them at all. The latter feeling is partly due to the surprise endings of some of the stories. The writing is vigorous and at the same time intimate, with even the tough male characters showing their vulnerabilities. My favorite story was one of the longest, "Middleman." The narrator and main character is a 13-year-old, Jacob, who lives in New York City and tells of his relationships with his two best friends, the sister of one of the friends, and his own father. Although it is not foregrounded, the relationship with his father is particularly touching. Jacob also explores what it means to be Jewish; although his family is non-observant, he is drawn to learn more about the Jewish part of his identity, especially when he sees how others position him as Jewish, and his father tries to give him information and help him understand. Jacob is also learning about girls through his infatuation with his friend Kyle's older sister, Elsa, who alternately ignores him and uses him for his ability to introduce him to the world of modeling for commercials. Some of the other stories, with adult characters, are more fraught in different ways, focusing on male longing, awkward relationships among men, the nature of marriage, connections and misunderstandings across social class divides, what we don't know about our relatives and friends, violence, betrayal, and more. Interestingly, the author gives the last word, in the last story, "Ladies and Gentlemen," to a female character. Sara is a busy journalist, wife, and mother in her late thirties who is trying to decide whether to drop everything, at least for a brief time, to have an affair with a man she almost had an affair with in college. A part of her feels this is her last chance, in a life that has grown too predictable, to make up for the missed opportunity 20 years earlier, and to do something daring and intense, something just for herself. On her way to meet her prospective lover, she has a conversation with another man on the plane that makes her hesitate. This story is a fascinating meditation on marriage, connections, choices, missed opportunities, and commitment. Ross is a writer who has complete control of his material; his writing is strong and sure. Finishing the collection, I feel I have just visited a very different and yet strangely familiar world.