Selected Shorts: For Better and for Worse

Lena and Bob, though mentally challenged, are the happiest couple in this collection of short stories exploring marriage. Karen E. Bender’s “Eternal Love,” read to perfection by Joanne Woodward, is a touching and comic tale of their courtship, engagement, wedding and honeymoon. The title character of Shahrnush Parsipur’s “Mrs. Farrokhlaqa Sadraldivan Golchehreh” is not so lucky: she’s saddled with a critical, bullying husband. Frances Sternhagen reads the complicated names and foreign words so fluently that one wonders whether she speaks Farsi. Luis Alberto Urrea’s “Say Farewell to Her Many Horses,” about a Caucasian husband’s tenuous relationships with his late wife’s Native American parents, is read at a slow pace by Robert Sean Leonard. Like marriages themselves, For Better and for Worse has many wonderful moments, which make the collection worth committing to for a few hours. (Aug.)