From reporting of the Romanian Revolution of 1990 to a woman's life in Russia to fabulous love stories in The Americas, this edition of Granta seems especially disjointed. To my delight, with four stories out of eleven, it includes more fiction than usual. For me, these three pieces stand out:
"Summers with Juliet" by Bill Roorbach is a tremendously romantic and yet unsentimental memoir of meeting his future wife and their vacations that are short on luxury but filled with beautiful experiences.
"Dry Run" by Victoria Tokareva is the story of Mara, a larger-than-life woman's career manipulating men in Russia from Stalin to Gorbachev. Narrated by a friend, Larisa, who is too smart to get caught up in Mara's machinations, the story both catalogs changes in post-war Russia and leaves the reader wanting to know about the other people in Larisa's little address book.
"Gift for a Sweetheart" by Isabel Allende exuberantly tells how extravagant circus owner Horatio Fortunato eventually wins over the classy, wealthy, married Patricia Zimmerman by giving something her privileged life lacks. ( )