Wow! This story truly moved me. The detailed writing, the vivid metaphors...Ms. Groff’s talents as a writer are amazing. I will definitely be buying this story collection!

The female narrator walks through her Florida neighborhood at night while her husband is putting their kids to bed. As she speed-walks, she comments on what she sees, the people’s lives she glimpses through their windows, and the stresses of her own life. While originally dingy and dangerous, her neighborhood has been revitalized, yet she still sees the hurt, pain, and, “everydayness” that lurk in the shadows. A fat man running on his treadmill and, over time, losing weight. A house of nuns dwindling as the old ladies die off. A lady (possibly sick) walking her great dane. Even the narrator’s husband might be having an affair. The mundane, earthly things the narrator witnesses in the glimpses of rooms, people, and yards she sees as she walks are LIFE. While small and quick, they are the little, everyday things that compose a human life. The setting, the characters, the situations, the emotions...all that the narrator sees are the plot points of the human story and they’re fascinating...all the more intriguing when relayed by Groff’s deft skills.

I could go on and on about how good this slice-of-nightlife tale is, but I’ll let Groff do it with this amazing sample: “Window after window nears, freezes with its blue fog of television light or its couple hunched over a supper of pizza, holds as I pass, then slides into the forgotten. I think of the way water gathers as it slips down an icicle’s length, pauses to build its glossy drop, becomes too fat to hang on, plummets down.”

Amazing, right? Definitely seek this one out and read it. Highly (highly) recommend.

I loved this story. I seem to gravitate toward the ones that speak to the mundaness and social aspects of middle-aged mom life and this one does that in spades.

In almost all dialogue, a group of moms discuss seeing a woman walking into the woods at their kids’ soccer game and she never comes back out. The setting is a birthday party for one of the kids. Through realistic and at turns funny, angry, sad, and scary dialogue the discussion or gossip by these women is terrific. It really gets you into the question of where this woman went, while also making you feel like you’re there, listening to the conversation. No one even has a name (they’re all referred to by letters), which makes it even more interesting. Each woman’s personality is not tied to a name, it’s instead related exclusively by turns of phrase, language, and the comments of the main character "J." They talk of Netflix, spoiling TV shows, the soccer dad who’s a loud bully, they all get quiet when one of the moms curses (worried the kids will hear). It’s very relatable and true-to-life.

The meat of the story comes from J, who shares that she went into the woods looking for the woman and ended up lying on the ground, overcome with an odd feeling of being alive and dead at the same time. Kind of like becoming one with nature. The women are, at turns, appalled, intrigued, and annoyed. There’s also the undercurrent theme of overworked, harried moms wanting at some point to say “screw it all” and walking into the woods and never coming back. That image...a woman walking away from her kids, life, husband...the prescribed roles she has to play in life for freedom...is compelling. And the way the author explores it here is so well done. Definitely check this one out!

What a fascinating story! Asminov himself considered this the best story he had written and I can see why.

In this tale, we get six different histories that begin on May 21, 2061. In that first history, two men, slightly drunk, share that Earth finally figured out how to use the energy of the sun to power everything, no coal or uranium needed. They go on to ask Multivac, Earth’s main computer, the question, “When will entropy end?” Meaning when will the heat energy of the sun/stars that runs the universe finally die out for good? No more sun, no more stars, no energy at all. They get the answer: INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER. As humans and Multivac evolve in the next histories, things change but that answer continues to get asked and the answer is always the same.

How Asminov imagines humans and the computer evolving over time is pretty neat. First humans are bodies living on Earth until they’re eventually consciousnesses that exist independent of their actual bodies. By the end, Multivac has evolved into AC, the only computer on Earth. At that point, all human consciousnesses have merged with AC to create one collective being that is the only thing left when space and time have ended. Now, with all the data finally collected since nothing else exists, AC does an analysis and is able to answer how to “restart” life. With no one left to tell the answer to, AC “shows” it instead. “Let there be light.”

This intriguing mix of science and theology poses a compelling idea: That we are both the created and the creator. It also prescribes to the idea that life--in this case the life of life itself--is cyclical. I love how Asminov thought about this. Not only did he, like the best sci-fi writers of his generation, predict some futuristic ideas that have actually come to pass, he gave them a profundity that makes this story both entertaining and enlightening. I also love the idea that the beliefs of evolution and creation can coexist and, in a way, work together to create the world. Read this one! It’s really good.

Just a note that I've only the title story, "A Lucky Man." I'm reading a short story a day for 2020 and this story was yesterday's story.

It’s interesting how this story touches on some of the issues we’re seeing debated in the national conversation right now. Lincoln Murray, a family man, is on the NYC subway on his way to work as a security guard at a predominantly white school. On the way there, he clandestinely takes a picture of a younger woman’s face while on the subway. We find out he has 60 pictures of random women’s faces on his phone and his wife found them and has left him because of it. While at school, his coworker says Lincoln is a “lucky man” because his wife’s so great. After he finds out that she has left Lincoln, he suggests Lincoln go home early.

While walking home, Lincoln passes an all-girls elementary school. While trying to respond to a text his daughter, Tameka, has sent him, a white woman standing nearby accuses him of taking pictures of the little girls with his phone. She calls him a pervert and he hurries away when she demands to see his phone. While walking, he deletes all 60 of the pictures of female faces he has. When he gets home to his daughter, he tells her what happened but admits to us readers that he ended up lying to her about what really happened.

This story speaks to a black man who’s wrongly accused of doing something that he didn’t do by a white woman (similar to today’s discussions about systemic racism)...but, in this case, he did do it, just not in the sense that she accuses him of. Lincoln might not have taken pictures of the young girls in lewd ways, but his phone does have 60 pictures of women’s faces. Pictures he took that they did not consent to. The false accusation against him does seem to shock him into realizing that the excuse he’s made before for his predilection--that they're just faces, not other body parts--is no excuse. So while he loves his wife and daughter, at the same time he doesn’t treat other women as he treats the women close to his heart. It’s also surprising that--after seeming to be so upset about being accused of being a pervert that he deletes the pictures he does have--he lies to his daughter about what happened. This story examines race, masculinity, family, and mens’ attitudes toward women. If you’re looking for a story that brings up some interesting and prevalent issues, check this one out.