STILL NO WORD FROM YOU

Another top-notch collection from the author of Am I Alone Here?

Orner—a legitimate triple-threat: novelist, short story master, and prolific essayist—returns with an addictive collection of more than 100 buoyant essays organized around a single day and a wide range of emotions. “Preaching the gospel of fiction”—and literature in general—the author roves around freely, exploring the work of Virginia Woolf, John Cheever, Primo Levi, Shirley Hazzard, Gina Berriault, Robert Hayden, Marilynne Robinson, Yoel Hoffmann, Stacy Doris, Juan Rulfo, and numerous others. The lyrical chapters unwind from noisy “Morning” to melancholy “Night.” Orner begins with vivid memories of his “loud, cackling” family members—mother, father, uncles, Grandpa Freddy in Fall River, Massachusetts—and growing up in Highland Park near Lake Michigan, a “tear rolling down the face of the Midwest,” and he recounts the sadness a “dumb Jewish kid” felt watching Larry Holmes beat Muhammad Ali in 1980. Later, the author confesses, while reflecting on the more than 4,000 haiku that Richard Wright composed during his career, “like so many of my stories, nonstories, there’s no movement, no forward momentum.” By “Mid-Morning,” Orner is wistful that fellow Midwestern author Wright Morris is “forgotten, yes, but still among us.” Orner also ponders his grandfather’s World War II letters to his “showgirl wife,” Lorraine, often begging her to write him back. The author tells us why he “permanently borrowed” James Alan McPherson’s Hue and Cry from the library, a book that contains “Gold Coast,” a story he wishes he could memorize and recite “like a prayer.” Ella Leffland’s Mrs. Munck, which he left unfinished on a train, is one of those rare books “you go on reading whether you are reading them or not.”

As Orner inches toward “Night,” readers will be lamenting the end of his wise, welcoming, heartfelt book.