There's a bit from the story "Lake Arcturus Lodge" in this collection:

The longer the place sat empty the harder we tried, until everything started seeming like an instance of decoration. In those first days, I floated lupine petals in the water basins, arranged butterscotches in bowls. I knew tea roses would die, but I planted them anyway, in a daze of hopeless opulence and inevitable waste."

Fridlund's book is a little like that—you can feel the very deliberate and care-filled authorial choices as you move through the stories, and those sometimes feel ornamental and Baroque where Shaker might do. But there's no denying that they're good choices, and Fridlund may be flaunting her craft but it's not altogether a negative experience, and I found myself writing down particularly pretty or striking passages the whole time I was reading. The book's slimness works in its favor too here. In the end it felt a little like travel—the world looked different when I was finished—which is not a bad thing either. ( )