loren grossman

This somehow felt like a book written under contractual obligation. I very much wanted to like this book, as I am a huge fan of his previous works. And while I still very much enjoyed his narrative voice I found the few initial short stories trite, thin and not particularly well constructed. And then at about the mid way point, almost as if he had run out of material, the book of short stories veers into a novella taken directly from the cutting room floor of Rules of Civility. As if this was edited out initially and now brought back in as a “Director’s Cut”, now that Towles is famous and entitled to such things. Meh…I expected better.