A review by bjr2022
Why They Run the Way They Do by Susan Perabo
4.0
Susan Perabo is a sly, slippery, and wise writer. Even the though the first story in this collection, "The Payoff," had an ending that not only took me by surprise, but gave me one of those rare transcendent glimpses of a whole-life experience, it took me one more story to realize I was in the hands of somebody who would never take the easy way out. By that I mean, even if the material she was dealing with—in the case of the first two stories, young adults and domestic turmoil—might easily become genre stuff (young adult cute angst, navel-gazing women's fiction), no way would Perabo reduce it to that. She has sly eyes that see every corkscrew turn of the psyche and her work can suddenly slip, careening into unexpected places.
By the third story, I realized there would be nothing vaguely generic in this book, and I surrendered all expectations and simply enjoyed being surprised, moved, entertained, and gobsmacked—over and over again. In fact I was surprised that I was so surprised. I was surprised that I found myself either completely neutral or feeling something akin to camaraderie with smokers! Me? A person who has never smoked and watched my mother die a slow, agonizing death from emphysema? Many of the characters in Perabo's stories are smokers, and the writing is so surprisingly good that it can change your embedded reactions. Surprise!
By the third story, I realized there would be nothing vaguely generic in this book, and I surrendered all expectations and simply enjoyed being surprised, moved, entertained, and gobsmacked—over and over again. In fact I was surprised that I was so surprised. I was surprised that I found myself either completely neutral or feeling something akin to camaraderie with smokers! Me? A person who has never smoked and watched my mother die a slow, agonizing death from emphysema? Many of the characters in Perabo's stories are smokers, and the writing is so surprisingly good that it can change your embedded reactions. Surprise!