I love short story collections and have read many of them. However, this collection of stories was the worst I’ve ever read. The book contains ten stories, most of which center on grief and loss.

Two major issues I had with the writing was the overly long sentences, that ran on and on and on, seemingly forever. One or two now and then to break the pace is fine, but there were too many in this book. Secondly, the overuse of parenthesis was annoying and irritating. Again, when used sparingly, they are fine and often necessary, but the reader does not need several on the same page.

Based upon the title, “Two Nurses, Smoking,” and some hype surrounding the book, I though all the stories centered around the two nurses swapping stories while on a smoke break. But that was not the case. “Two Nurses, Smoking” was simply the title of the third story in the book. Often, a collection of short stories is titles after one of the stories, but usually either the first or last story, or the strongest story in the collection. That was not the case here. This story was certainly not the strongest. This was a boring story of two nurses swapping stories and then falling in love with each other.

The stories were inane and many made no sense at all. In “Clementine, Carmelita, Dog” we have a story about a dog that becomes separated from his owner and lost in the woods for several days after chasing a rabbit. Eventually, the dog encounters a man who takes him home and becomes his new owner. After a period of time, while out in the woods, the dog picks up the scent of his previous owner and goes to him. OK, what’s the point here?

In “Are You Experienced?” we have a story of a guy who steals money from his uncle and then prattles on and on about it.

“Vows” tells a story of a couple who each cheated on the other one, but later renewed their wedding vows and lived happily ever after until the wife died.

“Lightning Speaks” is a dumb story of two kids just getting high over and over. The story goes nowhere.

“The Red Dot” is a story of a man who drowned while swimming. Ironically his wife was, at one point, scared of water. So scared, she hated taking a bath.

“I Am Andrew Wyeth” tells the story of an artist who has a woman sign a non-disclosure agreement.

“First Encounters” tells the story of a man’s daughter who gets depressed and starts taking drugs after her boyfriend dies in a automobile collision.

“Stopping Distance” is a story of a couple that meet in a bereavement group, date and then get married. I cannot tell you how boring this story was, and it was the longest story of the collection.

Finally, “The Depletion Prompts” is perhaps the most interesting chapter, and is not a story at all, but a list of writing prompts. The prompts are rather detailed and would be useful to a writer stuck for ideas. However, the author (despite including them in the book), says he does not like writing prompts as they restrict the writer to a narrow box in which one is constrained to write the story from the prompt.

I cannot recommend this book at all and am glad I got it for free from my library. ( )