"Despite all that has happened to you, you are, in the end, no better than all the rest of us who must fight to stay afloat. We want, we rage, we desire, we fail, we succeed. We stand in that long, long line. Where were you when they taught us that?"

This clip serves as as a pretty good thesis for this collection of short stories from Edward P. Jones, Pulitzer-claiming author of The Known World. The current running through these tales is that of African-American families living in or aspiring to live in Washington, D.C., at various times in the 20th century. Sound interesting? No? Then it's not for you. But it is for those who admire style and form, and who have the patience to let a story unfold over 25 or 30 pages rather than be spoonfed their lit-ertainment.

To be honest, I only read half of the volume's 14 stories. I didn't feel committed anymore at the midpoint and felt I'd given it a good go. (Also, a friend referred me to Daniel Pennac's Rights of the Reader, a list of 10 that include "the right to not finish a book. There's a whole lot of lit in the world; I feel so off the hook!) A problem I found with Jones's stories is that some weren't clear-cut enough for me to differentiate their details from other stories I read later. Tucked up in my noggin, they started to bleed together.

"In the Blink of God's Eye" opens and tells of love and loss, a primary theme in these shorts. (What better themes are there?) "A Poor Guatemalan Dreams of a Downtown in Peru" is not as pretentious as that title would have one believe, but it's also a romance, if one set up by and revolving around a host of tragic coincidences that are quite possibly more maddening than those that comprised The Kite Runner (and that says something). "Guatemalan" crests early and often and ends beautifully, though.

"Spanish in the Morning" inhabits a schoolgirl's thoughts and ways to startling effect. "Resurrecting Methuselah" weaves one family's plight around the father's breast cancer diagnosis (he simply can't believe in the mid-20th-century that that's what he's got). That story ends rather abruptly or shabbily, though, tapering off to nothingness. (I had this gripe with Roald Dahl's The Umbrella Man shorts as well.)

"Old Boys, Old Girls" has a woman's former lover coming upon her corpse in an apartment and then systematically tidying up the premises and inexplicably cleaning up her body and dressing her in fresh clothes atop the covers. It's morbid maybe but touching, certainly. The titular story, “All Aunt Hagar's Children,” has an ex-con enlisted by a dead man's mother to find her son's killer. She doesn't watch revenge; she simply wants to know who did it. The man is resigned but determined, and what he uncovers at tale's end is worth the read.

"Blood spilled with violence never goes away, I remembered my mother teaching Freddy and me, and you can see it if you have a mind to."

I read the first two stories in this collection, but I am now thoroughly enmeshed in reading for the JCC book selection committee. I’m going to set this book aside, for right now anyway.

Honestly, I have a feeling I’m not going to get back to this book. The first two stories I read were wonderful in their way, but I read dutifully rather than breathlessly. The author is a wonderful prose stylist. On page 10, he beautifully captures the protagonists attitude in one sentence: “They were the children of once-upon-a-time slaves, born into a kind of freedom, but they had traveled down through the womb with what all of their kind had been born with — the knowledge that God had promised next week to everyone but themselves.”

But prose style isn’t enough. Jones begins the story with an attention-grabber: Ruth finds an abandoned baby in a tree. She takes him home, she raises the boy, she names him Miles, after her father-in-law.

Well, isn’t the story going to continue with the story of Ruth, and her jealous husband Aubrey, and Miles? That’s where I wanted to go. But then we wander off into the less-engaging story of blind Willie and his girlfriend Melinda, and we never get back to the story that originally grabbed me.

Critics have lauded the author and awarded him the Pulitzer Prize. But I feel frustrated and cheated and just want to know what happened to that teenage couple, Aubrey and Ruth, and their unplanned non-biological child.

Slightly less of an achievement than Jones’ novel The Known World, if only because there’s less “shock of the new” and these interconnected short stories can’t quite match World’s collective, holistic force. Still, though, what a powerful and necessary voice.

Very good!

I read this while re-reading Lost in the City to see how the stories connected. Lost in the City is the more powerful collection in my mind, but I enjoyed reading these stories as well, especially Root Worker, A Rich Man, and Tapestry. I would read anything this man wrote.

I loved the Known World and love short stories, so really wanted to love this. I didn't. "It was OK" pretty much sums up the collection.

This is a collection of 14 short stories set in Washington, D.C. that illuminate different aspects of the African-American experience during the 20th century in that city. The characters in these stories range from individuals moving to Washington from the country seeking a better life to individuals who were born and raised in the city. Since I was also born in Washington, D.C into a family where all four of my grandparents moved to Washington from the Virginia countryside seeking economic advancement, I could identify with many of the episodes and attitudes contained in these stories. Also, I enjoyed this book because Washington, D.C. became a character in each of the stories. I could visualize the places visited, the routes traveled, and the locations described. All of this made these stories very personal to me, but would be equally enjoyed by any reader.

If this wasn't a book club read, I wouldn't have finished it. Not compelling and I couldn't figure out the link between stories.