First published 1982
These five stories follow characters who exist on society's margins, each grappling with their inability to fit into the world around them. A middle-aged woman constructs elaborate fantasies to escape her mundane reality. An immigrant family member wrestles with cultural displacement in America. A scholar becomes consumed by an academic obsession that isolates him from human connection. Each protagonist retreats into private worlds of imagination, delusion, or fixation when external reality proves too harsh or unwelcoming. Ozick examines how people create alternative realities when they cannot find acceptance or purpose in their actual circumstances. The characters share a common thread of alienation, whether from their communities, families, or adopted countries. Their internal lives become rich with fantasy and preoccupation as compensation for their social disconnection. The stories reveal how isolation breeds both creativity and destructive self-deception, showing people who transform their loneliness into elaborate mental constructions that both sustain and trap them.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, american-fiction, 20th-century, contemporary, adult-fiction, 21st-century, academic
Vibes: atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Period: 20th-Century, 21st-Century
157 pages · Hardcover · Knopf