I met Peter Orner through "Am I Alone Here?", his beguiling mix of autobiography and literary musings. If that book made anything clear, it was that the author takes the short story form very seriously. "Esther Stories" bears that out. As one might expect, not every story here hits its mark, but at its best, the stories here more or less provide supporting evidence the author's claim that the short story provides authors more freedom to tell a story -- any kind of story -- than any other literary medium. The best stories here -- "County Road G", "The Two Poes", "At the Rainbow Motel", "Pile of Clothes", and the cycle of stories that focus on Esther Burman, the collection's namesake -- are small masterpieces, arguments in favor of the short story itself. It helps, I think, that many characters in these stories are committed storytellers themselves. "Esther Stories" overflows with rumors, family legends, fish stories, and second-hand accounts. In "Am I Alone Here?" Orner came off as a compulsive reader fairly obsessed by literature. In these stories, he seems to want to show that we are all, in our own way, obsessed by narratives of some sort.

Having said that, I liked the stories about the Burman family of Chicago much more than the ones about the Kaplan family of Fall River, Massachusetts. That can probably be chalked up to nothing more than personal preference, but that also counts for something. Some of this collection's other stories, while well-crafted, didn't really hit me the way the author might have intended them to. Others seemed, well, too short to really grab my attention. But novels have their strong and weak points as well: nobody makes every shot they take. I expect that I'll revisit some of these stories more than once and am happy to say I've got a one or two of Orner's other short story collections on my Kindle. Recommended. ( )

Stunning writing. Probably one of the best story collections I’ve read in a long time. ( )

This book of short stories was a challenge. They were well written about interesting people i cared about, but i feel i frequently missed some of what orner was trying to say. ( )