The loss of a lifetime partner can send one into previously unknown recesses of emotion. So many huge dismissals and tiny slights come at you each and every day. Out of discomfort or social awkwardness, other people say and do things that merely serve to reopen the wound. In this collection of short stories, Latiolais (A Proper Knowledge) utilizes the lens of her own experience to translate into words the strange new world of the recently widowed. Her characters range from a young widow confronting an obtuse gynecologist to a woman out on the town for the first time and reexperiencing sexual longing. VERDICT Those who have walked this path will find common ground, while those who have not will find much to consider. All who venture here will discover some very fine writing. This collection will appeal to recent fans of Joan Didion and to short story readers who have the courage to face the darker sentiments.-Susanne Wells, Cincinnati (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

We first meet the widow in consultation with an oafish gynecologist and instantly tune into her rapier intelligence, discipline, drollery, and grief. She is too young to be widowed, and intimations of medical malpractice associated with her husband's death are embedded in each of her stories, until, at last, the terrible truth is unveiled. But Latiolais judiciously separates the widow's tales from the other concise yet loaded stories about women and longing, wives and husbands, and the body deprived. A master of banter, Latiolais is happily bawdy and gorgeously sensual. She is also archly imaginative and psychologically astute. In Boys, a woman is amused and stirred by the male performers in a Vegas strip club. Pink begins with a museum collection of teacups and dives into our very origins. An oyster knife makes a match in Gut, a hilarious love story. The humor and habits that hold couples together, the odd contracts we make with ourselves, loneliness, the social taboo against grief--all take potent form in Latiolais' 17 intricate stories, finely patterned miniatures spiked with the unexpected.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2010 Booklist