The Moon in Its Flight

Is there another writer today who can evoke a time, a way of life, with the gutsiness of realism tinged with the poet's touch? It would be impossible to pick one of these stories as a favorite since they are all evocative, shadow cast in nostalgia not only for a certain style, but a certain time. Sorrento is such a wonderful writer who should be better known.

There are a lot of different elements, I think, in what makes these stories so delightful, and I can't say I really understand how they meld. While they can be hilarious, somehow or other the primary element isn't satire, but something sadder and deeper and sweeter. There's a whole lost world here in the references of the forties, fifties and sixties. And the voice that so superbly apprises us of the trajectories of these mad men and women belies its own distance in its loving detail. It is hilarious, but something more, too.