A Blind Corner

From the author of Mrs. and Fundamentals of Play comes a brilliant and biting short story collection about privilege, pride and our nagging need to belong. In an era of "hot takes" and easy generalizations, this collection is a reclaiming of the centrality of the individual in any narrative. In Macy's stories, human proclivities and fatal blind spots meet the nuances and ironies of the real world to trump the convenient, social-media driven narratives which sort people into neat but unrealistic boxes of insider or outsider; good or bad; with us or against us. Whether at home or abroad, Macy's female characters see their good intentions turn awry in the face of harsh realities -- a woman who tries to do a good deed for an underprivileged child sees it go horribly wrong. A wife, attempting to be good host to a friend's strange ex-boyfriend, finds herself in a compromising situation. And, in the title story, a young American wife fancies herself well-cultured in Italy until an accident occurs that reminds her just how much of a foreigner she truly is. In tales where expectations are overturned in shocking and sometimes brutal means, Macy forgoes easy moralization in favor of uncomfortable truths that reveal the complexity of what it means to be human.