Moffett is a master of quirky and unconventional storytelling. These are not surreal, Kafka-esque pieces, but neither are they - at least conspicuously - traditionally plotted stories with a clear and transparent emotional arc for the protagonist to undergo. These are snippets from people's lives - often a little bizarre. With most of the stories, as Charles Baxter would recommend, there is no moment of epiphany for the protagonist. But we are thoroughly transported into each of these character's unique worlds. Moffett has a terrific ability to get under each of these disparate character's skins.

There are passages of outstanding writing and inventiveness when he unveils the unconventional ways these characters think and act. Just consider one passage from "A Statement of Purpose" after a man asks his girlfriend if she'd stick with him if he became paralyzed and then he imagines what he'd be like: "I'm determined not to let my affliction slow me down. I'm active in wheelchair sports, advocacy groups, select political campaigns ... I'll definitely be putting a mini license plate on the back of the wheelchair. Something uplifting for the kids." (I'd be hard-pressed to come up with so many clever, varied and specific details if I was trying to write a similar riff.)

There is a lot of humor here - but it's the dry, rather droll type, with "Ursa, On Zoo Property and Off" the best example of that.

The synopses below are intended to whet your appetite. Getting a quick content overview of each story often does a better job of enticing me to delve into a collection than does reading that standard blurb that seems to appear on the back of every collection by a first- or second-time author in which a recognized name declares this writer is the "next great voice in American fiction." As Moffett himself noted in an interview, the best stories really defy synopsis, and that is especially true of the pieces in this collection. The stories meander down lots of side paths, and they're full of interesting details that don't - on the surface at least - seem to serve the traditional purpose of moving a piece along to some big conclusion.

The 9 stories in the collection, with Florida as the prime setting, are:

1. Tattooizm - 21 pp -- A great look at the wildly divergent dreams of a young couple. Dixon is an aspiring tattoo artist, who uses his thighs as his practice sketch pad. He dreams of opening a store with his girlfriend, Andrea, and living with her in an apartment above it. 19-year-old Andrea, from whose viewpoint this 3rd-person story is told, has no such plans, but she hasn't let Dixon know yet. She intends to break up with him at the end of the summer, right before she enrolls in a community college. She spends most of her time daydreaming how she'll describe Dixon to her next boyfriend, and there are some very funny passages in this vein: "...Dixon had a foot-shaped gas pedal in his car ... he was fond of movies in which an adult and a child switch bodies." Just a few quick strokes, but a perfect characterization. The one promise that Andrea has made to Dixon is that she'll let him give her a tattoo, and the tension in the story comes from our wondering if she'll honor that promise before their break-up. In this piece, a character does undergo a transformation based on insight obtained over the course of the story, but surprisingly it's not our protagonist, Andrea.

2. The Fortune Teller - 12 pp - A moving tale of an older woman whose life has run its course and expired on her before she has. The fortune telling shop she owns on a beach doesn't attract any customers anymore and a friend of hers has died. She's left with nothing much to do but ride her bike around town, visiting the friend's former house, which is up for sale, and the friend's burial site. Her friend collected bells from her travels around the world, and the woman steals one of the bells during a realtor's open house. (The cabinet with the treasured bells is now cast aside, neglected and forgotten in a closet). The woman wonders how to direct people to dispose of her belongings and waits for the moment her life will tip in another important direction.

3. The Medicine Man - 14 pp - A great character study of a manic depressive and his scrambled view of the world. The narrator, Charlie, thinks an acquaintance with a deep tan is a medicine man, and he brings him gifts that he values but the medicine man doesn't, thinking that's the rule for medicine-man gift-giving. He obsesses over the games he used to play with his sister, but he only remembers fixating on the rules and never enjoying playing the games themselves, which is a bit of a metaphor for his life. His only real relationship has been with his sister, but that relationship has been hindered in his adult life by the fact that her husband doesn't like him. In a great closing scene, this man with the scrambled brain can do what his "sane" brother in-law can't - unscramble at-home ultrasound equipment that enables him, not the husband, to hear the heartbeat of his pregnant sister's baby. (This story, while more literary, reminded me of a great novel that offered a similarly humorous and poignant portrayal of a man with mental/emotional issues - Matthew Quick's The Silver Linings Playbook: A Novel.)

4. The Gardener of Eden - 19 pp -- The owner of a plant nursery becomes unsettled by the death of an employee, a married woman he had only a few conversations with, although he had felt the start of what could have been a deeper bond during a brief chat he'd had with her about a poisonous tree in her front yard. After her death from food poisoning, he becomes obsessed with trying to offer his tree-cutting services to her late husband so that their special needs son won't suffer any injury climbing or playing near the dangerous tree.

5. Ursa, On Zoo Property and Off - 16 pp -- The piece most often cited in reviews for its humor, which starts with a silly, or at least rather absurdist, premise - a team of office workers decides to free one animal at a zoo, but they can't decide which, so they vote to make their choice at the zoo, hoping some animal's actions will help them determine which one is worthy of earning its freedom. At the zoo, the group gets distracted by things like the "macaque's swollen rear haunches." In the end, the only "animal" they set free is a waitress in a bear suit (wearing the suit is a punishment for the zoo staff). The narrator invites her home, hoping she won't take off the head of the costume too soon, so that she'll maintain her bear identify for him as long as possible. There's an interesting sidetrack about the narrator's growing a long beard. His co-workers tease him about it because he looks like "Grizzly Adams," which implies that he's a natural friend of bears. But at the zoo, he sees an overnight bag in a bathroom and shaves it off - so poorly that one of the apes who can speak in sign language says, "man, face, bloody, unfortunately."

6. The Volunteer's Friend - 20 pp - Tate, an older man whose wife of 40 years died of cancer just two years earlier, develops cancer himself and must begin undergoing treatment. His doctor recommends he take advantage of the services of a hospital volunteer who will visit him to check up on him. He develops an odd relationship with the young volunteer, Callie. She begins to act inappropriately - asking if she can take a bath in his apartment. When she invites him to come talk to her while she's in his tub, he's not sure if she's looking for conversation or something more. On another visit, when she gets him to dance with her to his wife's French records and then dons a wig his wife had worn during her chemo treatments, it may be all too much for him.

7. A Statement of Purpose - 15 pp - A young man, Ben, meets a woman, Adria, when they get a chance to swim in a manatee tank, and he wonders if they'll be able to ride them. He then daringly asks her "Can I ride you?" Adria doesn't reject him for such a crass and bold pick-up line, but instead starts dating him. Oddly, he doesn't attempt to "ride" her for months. He's attracted to flaws and he was initially interested in her because she has very crooked teeth. She decides to surprise him by getting braces. He decides to surprise her with a "statement of purpose" that shows he's committed to the relationship - a puppy. But will he still be interested once Adria corrects the flaw that attracted him? (A little riff, mid-story, on the flaws that appeal to him is both funny and peculiar. Just half of it is: "...women with lazy eyes, with neck braces, arm slings, stretch marks, missing fingers, acne, rosacea, psoriasis, mangled toes, arm fat, women with skin grafts, burns, and other scars, scars, in particular those glorious raised red keloid scars.")

8. Space - 19 pp -- A young man, Ray, lives with his grandmother in the aftermath of his mother's death from cancer. His grandmother, a rather frivolous woman who likes to play with words and write letters of complaint to authority figures, has been hiding from Ray what his mother's final words were. It becomes his quest to get his grandmother to tell him. Meanwhile, while riding the bus to his community college classes (one of his classes is astronomy or "Space"), he meets a young 19-year-old mother with her infant. The Hispanic girl can barely speak English, but her baby breaks the ice for them. When he runs into the mother again, he learns her baby died, and he gets conscripted into going into Sears to a buy a dress that her baby can be buried with. After that experience, he decides to force his grandmother to reveal his mother's last words. A great line of dialogue comes when a neighbor from the grandmother's retirement community wonders why Ray is spending so much time with his grandmother, instead of chasing girls: "I think your grandmother is warping you is what I think."

9. The Newcomer - 18 pp - A story that reads a bit like a much more artful and inventive version of those old SNL Czechoslovakian brothers skits with Dan Aykroyd and Steve Martin. Spiros, an Eastern European immigrant, enrolls in the Advanced Institute for American Furtherance, to meet women, and he pairs up with a Turkish sidekick. He wants the beautiful women who hang out at the Institute's smoking gazebo to join him in a complex game called "Uh-Oh," the national pastime of his home country. The game requires 202 participants and seems to involve some sort of battle with complex gear and pits teams of men against women. The story is also told from the perspective of Ekaterina, another immigrant who hangs out at the gazebo but isn't as aloof and shallow as the other women. Spiros hopes that by explaining the protocol of the game to the gazebo ladies - the "angels" in his mind - he'll entice them to play. The question is, then, whether his decidedly un-American approach to breaking the ice with the beauties will have any success. Moffett does a great job of creating an alternate world within this institute which has clubs with names like People for the Ethical Treatment of Me and People Oppressed by People Oppressed by People.
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