The Short Review

The new issue is out! Always a cause for celebration, each edition of The Short Review is packed with interviews and reviews of short story collections, classic, contemporary - you name it, it's here. I'm looking forward especially to reading the reviews of Richard Yates' Collected Stories, and Both Ways is the Only Way I Want it by Maile Meloy. My review of Grace Paley: The Collected Stories is also in this new issue:

The Long-Distance Runner, I’m told, is an allegory for the menopause. So what, frankly? It’s a terrific story of a woman running away from her life and into other people’s. Paley ends the story like this: "A woman inside the steamy energy of middle age runs and runs. She finds the houses and streets where her childhood happened. She lives in them. She learns as though she was still a child what in the world is coming next."

Yes, she does. Exactly.