MID-AIR

One family finds its fortunes on the rise just as another sees its own begin to fall.

The two novellas that make up Shorr’s lovely new book describe the falling, in one, and, in the other, the rising fortunes of two American families. In the first piece, a young couple hosts a dinner party for a few remaining members of the husband’s WASPy family: Uncle Edward, now in his 90s, who still wears a three-piece suit every day; Cousin Betty, who once read all of Proust while pursuing a divorce; Russell, whose father staked the family’s security on a biography he was writing—a definitive one—of Benjamin Franklin only to lose, at the last minute, the only manuscript; etc. In the second piece, Sam White arrives at Ellis Island from what might have been Poland, or Ukraine—somewhere in Eastern Europe, anyway—to a newly anglicized name as well as a new life. Eventually, he acquires a wife, three sons, and an auto wrecking yard in Ohio, and the family’s mobility is rapidly ascendant. In both pieces, Shorr takes the long view, describing years—decades, sometimes—within a single paragraph. In the first piece, this strategy works well. The dinner party provides the perfect framing device for the narrator to shift her gaze from guest to guest. Shorr’s prose is fluid and supple, and the story has a lively movement. The second piece, however, about the White family, becomes bogged down in places. This story is longer and includes more characters and a longer span of time, and though Shorr uses the same quickly moving narrative strategy, it doesn’t work quite as well as it did the first time. Still, her insights are so keen, and her storytelling so elegant and natural, it would be easy to follow her down just about any train of thought.

With its neat corners and tidily resolved patterns, this book is a quiet accomplishment.