5 Books That Will Surprise You

In these 11 stories, Shepard lays bare the intimate lives of girls and women, many of them Asian-American. Narrators reappear throughout the book, growing up as the collection progresses. The first story follows a group of privileged adolescents having reckless sex with men they've barely met. ("In our homes, our parents who love us are still sleeping. Our younger brothers and sisters, who think we're way cool but who tease us mercilessly, have kicked off their covers and are murmuring in their dreams.") Later, we meet a wife dealing with stillbirth and superstition, a mistress who finds herself in an awkward relationship with her lover's widow after 9/11, and a group of devoted mothers who describe their sons as "a hall of mirrors in which we see ourselves, past, present and future: secret hopes, genetic legacies, future possibilities." Yet, this is not a journey of aging into wisdom—problems solved. Shepard knows all too well that midlife can be as messy as youth. She is unflinching in her depictions of self-destructive choices and betrayal as well as friendship and love. One of her characters uses the phrase "ecstatic friction" to describe her relationship with her brother; that term could apply to the whole no-holds-barred collection.