After You've Gone

Adams's new collection of 14 short stories exhibits many of the strengths and weaknesses of earlier efforts (i.e., Return Trips , LJ 8/85). That she is a fine wordsmith capable of insightful comment on the joys and sorrows of human relationships, there is no doubt. She is also adept at examining the impact of memory on our lives. In these stories, it is the memory of someone--and, in a couple of cases, "somecat," now absent--that stimulates the chain of events. Taken… (more)

Adams's new collection of 14 short stories exhibits many of the strengths and weaknesses of earlier efforts (i.e., Return Trips , LJ 8/85). That she is a fine wordsmith capable of insightful comment on the joys and sorrows of human relationships, there is no doubt. She is also adept at examining the impact of memory on our lives. In these stories, it is the memory of someone--and, in a couple of cases, "somecat," now absent--that stimulates the chain of events. Taken individually, the stories can be quite evocative, but when considered as a whole, the characters seem all "of a type" and reading becomes more and more tedious. Certainly, the voice of the introspective, intelligent, upper-middle-class woman deserves to be heard, but if Adams wants her message to reach a wider audience, she needs to expand her vision, to offer the reader a little more contrast. For public and larger academic libraries.