This Road Will Take Us Closer to the Moon

The linked stories of Moore’s debut collection (after The Distance Between) add up to a singularly elegiac life-in-parts. Their subject is Margaret, a woman in the “late afternoon” of her existence. We meet Margaret in “That’s a Fact” recalling a ’50s childhood defined by WWII and family secrets, and follow her to emotional and physical infirmity in “Final Dispositions,” as she is cruelly shuffled between institutions and surviving family members. The 12 stories in between concern truck stop diners, second marriages, Margaret’s frequent clashes with her sister, and the hope of salvation and a better world beyond. Not much actually happens as Margaret meditates on aging and family—but it happens to great effect. Sidelined by her class, confined by limited opportunity and an overriding sense of her own mediocrity, Margaret tries hard not to resent the wider world (“however much my whole life’s a flagrant failure, at least I am not them”) or the alternate lives she sees in the eyes of ex-lovers and dormant friendships. Cleverly arranged to undermine Margaret’s sense that “America is what you read about in school,” these autumnal reveries and missed chances have the feel of immediate classics. (Nov.)