"Shout Her Lovely Name," by Natalie Serber

"Shout Her Lovely Name" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012), by Natalie Serber, is a collection of short stories, all interconnected except for a few stories. The interlocking stories feature a mother (Ruby), from the time she was young, and her daughter Nora, each going through various adventures, loves, and losses. Although mother and daughter are very different, they have some commonalities, and they always stay connected. The title story, which is not one of the interconnected stories, is a powerful portrayal of a mother's dealing with a teenaged daughter with a serious eating disorder. Her heartbreaking fear and attempts to do the right thing in the face of her daughter's massive denial and resistance seem very realistic and are very moving. All the stories engage with women's lives, families, sexual and romantic relationships, and most especially the fraught but so very important mother-daughter relationship. As a daughter and a mother of a daughter myself, I can relate to some of these interactions, although the specifics of my life are quite different from those of the stories' characters.