American old ducks lined up in tangled rows

COURTESY PICADOR USA

When I read, I often wish myself into the fantasy worlds that spring suddenly and vividly to life on the page. I envy the characters these pages contain and find myself dissatisfied with my fairly routine existence. I wish that I could travel the world with abandon, experience childhood in a foreign country, or fall so passionately in love that I'd forget what it's like to exist as a single person. But sometimes I encounter a book that makes me glad to live the life that I do, even at its most mundane. Lorrie Moore's Birds of America is such a book. A compilation of 12 short stories, recently released in paperback, it captures brief moments in the lives of ordinary people with unflinching accuracy and detail. Rather than taking us on exotic jungle safaris or leading us through the complex social world of Victorian England, Birds of America brings us straight into the minds and hearts of everyday people. It exposes the desperation, disillusionment, and banality threaded so thickly through contemporary pre-millennial American society.

In Birds of America, Moore delves beneath the carefully crafted exteriors of her characters, revealing the realities behind their social façades. It's at once disturbing and heartening to be immersed in the daily miseries, inadequacies, and small triumphs of people who seem so superficially normal. It's often impossible not to identify with Moore's characters, which makes it equally impossible to maintain an ironic distance from them. Most of us can see in ourselves the jilted lover of "Community Life," the grown child at odds with her parent in "Which is More Than I Can Say About Some People," the woman yearning for intangible fulfillment in "Agnes of Iowa." Moore's stories carry universal impact as a result of characters that are at once unique and generic. We see ourselves in every page, yet struggle to look away from the proffered mirror.

Moore's remarkable ability to evoke these multi-dimensionally human personalities with only a few choice words creates much of the book's magic. In "Which is More Than I Can Say About Some People," Moore describes the husband of the protagonist, writing "Bob was big and comforting. But he didn't have a lot to say. He was not a verbal man. Rage gave him syntax but it just wasn't enough!" Moore conveys the cornerstone of Bob's existence instantly: the struggle of articulateness against pure physicality. Similar gems of characterization are sprinkled throughout the book, allowing Moore's characters to emerge fully formed. Unlike many short stories, in Birds of America the people take priority, driving the plot rather than being consumed by it. They spring to life, convincing in their humanity and familiar fallibility.

Although Birds of Am-erica paints a fairly bleak portrait of American loneliness, it's also infused with a subtle wit that saves it from plunging into melancholy. Moore's prose shines with irony and humor, making light of common trials and reaffirming the comforting roundness of the world. In one passage, she writes, "Abby began to think that all the beauty and ugliness and turbulence one found scattered through nature, one could also find in people themselves, all collected there, all together in a single place. No matter what terror or loveliness the earth could produce...a person could produce the same. There was nothing so complex in the world—no flower or stone—as a single hello from a human being." Moore renders life quickly and accurately, letting us laugh at our struggles, adding light and levity to the often mundanely arduous world of daily life. Her uncompromising look at modern America is both charmingly honest and beguilingly clever.

Despite Moore's connection to popular society, Birds of America sometimes skirts the territory of inaccessible oddity. The eccentricity of her stories and their impenetrable endings creates barriers for the reader. Though the characters are almost archetypes of normality, they invariably possess some odd trait or paranoia that sets them apart from the conventional, making it difficult to reach them. Consequently, Birds of America can alienate instead of invite.

Even in its frequent remoteness from routine human experience, Birds of America hits surprisingly resonant emotional chords. Moore not only teaches us about the characters that she creates, but also shows us our own insecurities. Her writing encapsulates many of the frequently ridiculous details of life within American society, exposing both human strength and vulnerability. Moore gives us many gifts in Birds of America, but the greatest of these by far is this: she makes us wish ourselves less fallibly human while still celebrating our own imperfections.

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