TOTAL

Seven stories focus on the many guises of obsessive (though not particularly sexual or romantic) love, and Miller's tone is disarmingly matter-of-fact throughout.

The protagonists are mostly women, privileged, if not necessarily wealthy, members of the liberal elite. Their passion often centers around children. The opener, “Mrs. Covet,” concerns Daphne, an overwhelmed mother of three, one a newborn, who feels ambivalent about her new nanny; threatened by the nanny’s competence, Daphne also luxuriates in her novel freedom from parental responsibility until a crisis awakens her fierce maternal protectiveness. The mother in “Vapors” is taking her 2-year-old for a walk when she runs into an old lover. Memories of various intensely troubled romantic relationships come flooding back, but none can ultimately compare to her emotional connection to her child. The title story hinges on a science-fiction conceit—social networking technology available only to the well-to-do goes terribly wrong, resulting in the birth of morbidly fragile children who spend their brief lives expensively institutionalized—but it becomes an intense exploration of family ties: When a teenager decides to rescue her younger sister from the institution where their well-meaning, quietly distraught parents have placed her, her plans go awry, but the telling is more sweet than bitter. In “I Want You To Know,” a case of obsessive motherly love gone fatally wrong acts as a plot pivot, a story within the story about a woman coming to grips with the new rural life she’s committed to with her husband. The protagonist in “Receipts” chooses career over family, knowing and accepting the cost. The nature of storytelling is the theme in “She Came to Me,” the only story with a male protagonist, one whose need to feed his creativity in a comically dark erotic adventure equals his avowed commitment to his family. Finally, “The Chekhovians” is itself a riff on Chekhov: There's family tragedy, comic class conflict, and an unexpected offer of money.

A beautifully constructed, acutely felt, morally honest collection.