How to Fall

January 17, 2005
In her third delicately eccentric collection of short stories, the underappreciated Pearlman (Vaquita
; Love Among the Greats
) pegs characters as diverse as a comedian's silent sidekick, a 17-year-old girl newly independent from her two mothers and a PBS anchor who bemoans after a makeover, "You're not attractive, you know—you only look attractive." More than half of the stories are set in Godolphin, a fictional Boston suburb where daily life is enacted in all its glorious monotony; several explore the mixed emotions roused by charity. In "The Large Lady," an uncomely representative of a fund-raising organization for starving kids manages to shake a gathering of suburban do-gooders from their complaisance, prompting one guest to reflect "Hell gapes for the merely empathic"; in "Rules," a dour mother and her home-schooled daughter rile the volunteers at a soup kitchen. Other stories revolve around twosomes: in "Home Schooling," twin sisters Willy and Harry share a non-traditional childhood; in "Signs of Life," Clara and Valerie have lived through the extraordinary and unimaginable, but consider themselves simply old and in love; in "Shenanigans" the elderly mothers of a dating couple meet and become friends: "They were each other's destiny, hinted the tall old Jewess. The tiny flower of Erin concurred." Pearlman's light touch and wry tone give the stories a pleasant buoyancy. Agent, Jill Kneerim at Kneerim & Williams.