Sorrow, provoked by one's own actions, runs through Jane Smiley's 2002 collection of short stories. I am a fan of Jane Smiley, but have not read anything of hers in a while. I forgot that part of what makes her pieces wonderful - and surprising - are the mundane components of life.

In the story Dynamite, Sandy, a middle-aged woman living in Missouri, is an engineer for a fertilizer plant. She leads a quiet life, alone, and spends most of her time discussing extensively with her partner the possibilities for improvements in their job. She is also wanted by the FBI for having built bombs for a leftist organization many years ago. It's these surprise punches that keep me reading Smiley's work.

For Sandy, the sorrow she carries in her daily life is not the specific actions of her past, but the identity she has let go because of them. She has a different name, a quilted history which does not include coming from New York or being Jewish. She has not spoken to her mother or siblings in years. She misses them and she misses being able to talk about herself - this is her sorrow. She states, "I don't see a lot of beauty around me. But I think that the world is a serviceable and solid place."

There is humor in many of these pieces as well. In Jeffrey, Believe Me, the narrator explains to Jeffrey how she cares for him deeply and why she selected him to father her child. When explaining her course of action she questions, "[D]o I lean across the table dripping necklaces into the dessert and say, 'Let's make a baby, Jeffrey'? Do I risk having to retreat into my chair and endure rejection while tonguing mousse au chocolat off my gold chains?" The tone of her entire piece is amusing, as she can describe and explain actions with a wonderfully flippant tone. Buried between these stories though, the reader is aware of her sorrow, even if she doesn't weep on the page (as it were). The narrator has to explain herself to this person she cares about because an element of their friendship - trust and perhaps something else - has been lost.

Most of the additional stories are comprised of couples falling in and out of love. A single woman befriends a couple and we come to learn about their marriage through her friendship. A middle-aged man prepares for a visit from his long-distance love. The title piece is from the point of view of a husband who tells of how he and his wife met, fell in love, and built the life they have now.

These are everyday people who carry everyday joys with them - moving into a new home, strawberry picking, reunions with old friends, the comfort of routine, the adoration of a two-year-old. They also carry everyday sorrows written Jane Smiley's quiet and beautifully surprising way.

Julia Eussen is currently pursuing her M.A. at Eastern Michigan University in the Written Communication Program. She is also an Assistant Organizer for the Ann Arbor Classics Book Group. She can be reached at jeussen at emich dot edu.