People From Bloomington

Set in Bloomington, Indiana, where the author lived as a graduated student in the 1970's, this short-story collection is far from idyllic portrait of small-town America. Rather, sectioned into apartment units and rented rooms and gridded by long, empty streets and distance traversable only by car, it's a place where the solitary can all too easily remain solitary, where people can be obsessively curious about others while failing to form genuine connections with anyone.