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224 pages, Paperback
First published March 25, 2009
It’s difficult work, but it’s fairly lucrative, nearly ten thousand a year, per family; and with Social Security going down the tubes, it’s nice to have spending money. But that can’t keep you interested. It’s hard to describe the feeling you get from opening your door, the inside of your house untouched by feet other than your own for so long, and finding a little boy or girl who is so excited to see you, has thought of little else for the past few days. You feel like a movie star, all the attention. They run into your arms and shout your name, though not your real name, and you are all that they care about (3).The second story is about a lonely young man, barely out of his teens, forced into being the caretaker for his younger troubled brother after his parents died suddenly. “Blowing Up On the Spot” is kind of depressing, even though I love the idea of the main character’s job as a Scrabble tile sorter. The letter tiles all descend in a loud clatter into a sorting area and employees aimlessly sift through thousands of the tiles looking for their assigned letter. It’s ridiculous and completely unbelievable, but I love the descriptions of the character’s job.
There are five large sorting rooms in the factory, each one filled with one hundred workers who sort through a mountain of wooden tiles, which fall in clumps from an overhead chute. At several times during the day, a large blue light flickers on and off, accompanied by a siren’s wail, and all the workers stop their sorting, pick themselves up off their hands and knees, and watch A’s and J’s and R’s fall all around them, making tic-tic sounds like a thousand typewriters going at once. I wade around in the alphabet, up to my knees, and search for Q’s. It is not a glamorous job (28).The stories have themes dealing with growing up and being faced with adult issues and how the characters deal with them. I also really liked “Birds in the House,” “Mortal Kombat,” and “The Choir Director Affair (The Baby’s Teeth).”