White People

These stories are great reading, and not as difficult as theauthor's huge first novel, which I also read. The author likes toconclude his stories with a surprise at the end, which seems toalways leave a lump in my throat. In at least two stories, *Blessed Assurance* and *Reassurance*, this technique is particularly effective. The preceding tales are worth the priceof the book. If you want to read the best of modern short fiction, you can do a lot worse than this book.

Allan Gurganus is the Pope of the Prose I can say that these stories--along with every other considered expenditure of ink from Gurganus' pen--are spawned of the same glorious stuff from which his earlier materials have hailed: Equal measure of intellect and imagination, with the penetrating consciousness of a God and the compassionate and deliberate sensibilities of a Son left much alone in the world by that God. Allan Gurganus' auspicious and Herculean talents have yet to be fully reckoned by either readers or critics, and I doubt they will be in his lifetime or mine. A shame, as they soar abundant and effortless above his contemporaries, a testimoney to the very best that preceded him and a testament to those that may come after.

I loved this book. Each short story from the first about a young boy and his relationship with his father to the last,drain you of emotions. I laughed till I had to go to the bathroom and I cried till I embarrassed myself! This book does what a book is supposed to do. It moves you and makes you think without that being it's purpose.