Christina Marrocco

It's been a busy couple of months since I was lucky enough to get a signed copy of Kim Suhr's short story collection, Close Call, fresh from the author's hands. A couple of busy months, which has meant I didn't get to dig in until now. If I were a billionaire, or even just a millionaire, I would buy and send copies of this book to all of my friends. God, it's a gorgeous read: intelligent, clear, layered, deep, real, and also lovely in form. It weighs up the pressures of modern life and the wrinkles as well--the children playing at school shooting scenarios, the man who makes prayer requests for his middle aged wife to become pregnant despite his vasectomy and despite the risks of getting what one asks for, the imperfect perfectness of womanly friendship, the moments and connections that are balm and are also stinging nettle. It's a book…

This book is a gorgeous, meticulous, precise, honest, unflagging look at realities, both internal and external. Reale, a poet and expert researcher, librarian combines memoir, essay reflection, and poetry to peel back the layers on her (our) reckoning with race. Her voice is simply sublime here as she, like a seam-ripper, opens the stitches of delusion and refusal to acknowledge realities and complexities--as she brings her truth observed up to our eyes--into the mirror, per se. This is not a book only for Italian Americans, it's for everyone. Applicable and important to all--I say--from a variety of lenses. A svelte volume, you will read it through and then re-read it sideways and upside down. I recommend this as an essential piece in your personal library--I recommend it as a piece in your classroom.