Red Room Where the Writers Are

Review Excerpt:

It’s interesting how you come to love a book--from the moment you hear about it or pluck it from a shelf, purchase it, and add it to the pile of books you’ve been meaning to read. Then, when you do find the quiet hour to begin it, it can seem that you discovered it at just the right moment. That is how I feel about Peter Orner’s Esther Stories. This is a stunning collection, and the synopsis above accurately recounts its thematic geography. I’ll only add how truly remarkable the terrain is that Orner can travel in just one page. Some of his briefest stories stay with you the longest, even just one sentence. For instance, this is how Orner begins “In the Walls”: “She said she had a theory about the places she’d lived: that she carried all her old rooms around with her, and that those rooms, in a sense, were her past.”

Jennifer Massoni, Red Room