Everybody Loves Somebody

Joanna Scott
Back Bay Books (2006)
ISBN 0316013455
Reviewed by Shalley Malchoir for Reader Views (1/07)

Joanna Scott, world-renowned author and Pulitzer Prize finalist, has compiled a collection of ten short stories. The stories span from World War One, all the way down to the present day. The stories all tell tales of heartache, heartbreak, and true love. Scott has a timeless way of telling a tale, and this book is sure to become a classic. Each story has a quiet simplicity to it, a commodity often unseen today.

From the first story, in which a ne'er do well father finds himself trapped in the bathroom of the hotel in which he is staying, unable to atone for his past sins and attend his daughter's wedding, the reader has a sense that Scott is speaking not merely from her imagination, but, rather, that she has an uncanny ability to peer into the inmost parts of the human heart, and define what resides within. No theme is too tense, or too sacred for Scott to analyze and interpret. From lives in the tenements of New York to a beautiful wedding on a bright, sunny ocean beach, to drunken bouts, prostitution, old age, and an infant making a feast out of a cicada shell, Scott weaves ten powerful tales of love and loss. Not only is romantic, passionate love related, as in the kiss that lasts near a half-hour, but also love for family, friends, and the human race.

Although, at times, the stories in “Everybody Loves Somebody” seem a bit "wordy," Scott has a knack for taking ordinary words and sentences, and converting them into beautiful, timeless, haunting tales that the reader will not soon forget.

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