Pink Harvest: Tales of Happenstance

Though billed as nonfiction, many of the essays in this collection by Mirosevich read more like poems in paragraph form. Unfortunately, many don't ring true, employing more abstract metaphor than real-world observation. For instance, ""The Raft"" follows the premise that everyone ""you"" have ever known is on a raft together headed for ""the end,"" while ""The View"" describes a homeless man with a mysterious hole in his chest: ""Where there once were ribs, there were no ribs. ...First she saw his lungs breathing. Then she could see straight inside to the man's heart."" Troublingly, Mirosevich offers no clues as to where her stories come from; her most common character is ""she,"" but there's no indication as to whether ""she"" is Mirosevich, or in fact anyone Mirosevich has actually met. In essays with a more solid grounding in real life, Mirosevich tends to stumble into the banal, as in ""Stripping,"" where she describes a single table for 12 pages. Without an anchoring character or a common thread of any kind, Mirosevich leaps among subjects as disparate as domestic abuse and refinishing furniture, leaving the reader unsatisfied and confused.