An acclaimed novelist (Some People, Some Other Place
), playwright (Strangers
) and short story writer (Some Love, Some Pain, Sometime
), Cooper checks in with a collection of stories that shine a spotlight on the lives of invisible women. Her characters are confined, whether by poverty and degradation, or by narcissism and the trappings of success, and they long for satisfaction and deliverance. In "In the Eye of the Beholder," Lily Bea, an ugly duckling, grows up into a graceful woman with an innate love of beauty that may not do her much good, while Harriet, a damaged hotel proprietress in "Catch a Falling Heart," struggles toward a better life using whatever or whoever is at hand. Fulfillment, when it happens, comes in the trappings of a good man or a home of their own and the economic freedom it signifies. Alcoholism, AIDS, licentiousness and loneliness contend with education, a trust in God and other simple remedies that are difficult to apply. Cooper's narrators are storytellers who watch from the margins of life, who might be seen at first as meddlers, but become recognizable as a small army of empathic souls, who struggle toward self-awareness, honest observation and forging connections (Apr.)
