Problems with People

The best-selling author of Snow Falling on Cedars returns to his Pacific Northwest settings-and moves beyond them-in ten sharply observed, funny, and wise new stories that explore the mysteries of love, and unravel our complex desires to connect with others.Ranging from teenage to middle-age, the voices that inhabit Problems with People offer humorous or searing but always tightly focused accounts of the universal quest to understand one another-individually, and as part of our political and historical moment. Their stories are sometimes shot through with tragedy-the long-ago loss of a young boyfriend, a son's death at sea-while in others, the mere circumstances of our cultures and selves-whether it is being Jewish; overweight and single; a tourist in a history-haunted land; or on the brink of a diminished old age-prompt questions about our sense of reality and belonging. Spanning diverse geographies-across America and in distant countries including Nepal,...