Herb’s Pajamas

With her own special brand of delicate, elliptical, and humorous fiction, Abigail Thomas offers another extraordinary visit with people she knows far better than they know themselves. There’s Walter, newly abandoned by his wife; there’s Edith, a fiftyish virgin; there’s Bunny, taking care of her mother and her mother’s boyfriend; and there’s Belle, whose married lover dies in the hallway wearing her dead husband Herb’s pajama top. Blindly, they encounter one another in ways the reader recognizes are profound even as the characters themselves are unaware. The genius and the art in this collection derives from the possibility that these ships might actually find each other by daylight. If only these four could get together–they’d be so good for each other. “Written with an expert touch, and a wise and tender sensibility. The effect is subtle, strong, and comic.”–Charles Baxter, author of BELIEVERS and BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE; “It’s hard to think she is capable of writing anything that isn’t immediately engaging and a joy to read. Probably someone should publish her shopping lists.”–Elizabeth Berg, author of TALK BEFORE SLEEP. A BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH CLUB SELECTION