Picking up the same one-to-three-page story by Lydia Davis ten times gives the reader ten different experiences, like taking a plate of gourmet food from a fussy child with her right hand, passing it behind her back to the left hand and returning it to the child saying “fine, eat your magic boopie beans” to the child’s ravenous delight. And the beauty of a book full of one-to-three-page, multidimensional gems is that you’ve got a book jam-packed with multidimensional gems.
Our Strangers by Lydia Davis, (List Price: 26, Bookshop Editions, 9798987717103, October 2023)
Reviewed by Ian McCord, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia