—Time Out New York
“Hood, author of Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine, has an easy, natural voice and a beguiling sense of humor. It’s easy to slip into the intriguing situations of the stories in her latest collection, An Ornithologist’s Guide to Life.”
—Margaret Quamme, Columbus Dispatch
“These stories are simply the way life is, not the way we would like it to be, and reading them is joyous, painful and, finally, exhilarating.”
—Susan Larson, New Orleans Times-Picayune “Ann Hood tells 11 sharp, surreal stories in her new collection, An Ornithologist’s Guide to Life.”
—More
“Short stories are sorely underrated, yet they are a wonderful amuse bouche between headier works or as a staple for commuters, and this new collection by acclaimed author Ann Hood will keep readers sated.”
—Elliot Bay Booknotes
“Writing with elegant precision, Hood’s awareness of place is tactile and familiar, drawing the reader into the scenes with her fumbling characters as they struggle with issues that require both courage and resilience; in the end, each tale uncovers an irrevocable moment of reckoning. . . . As the title intimates, the author is indeed an observer of human behavior, in this case human, not winged. Her protagonists are skillfully arranged for maximum emotional impact, illuminated, exposing the fragile undersides they are vainly trying to protect.”
—curled up with a good book
“These stories have bite. . . . Hood has enough perception to leave her characters room to grow after the stories end.”
—Library Journal
“An entertaining, brightly detailed collection.”
—Kathryn Schwille, Charlotte Observer
“Ann Hood has written a moving collection of stories about our everyday victories and defeats. Diverse and filled with surprises, these stories are bound by a common vision and with characters, lovingly drawn, who come together in incongruous and unanticipated ways.”
—Mary Morris, author of Acts of God
“Of course there is humor and wisdom and grace in these well-crafted short stories—Ann Hood wrote them. Even in the face of adversity, her characters cannot help but revel in all that life has to offer; they know no other tack.”
—Helen Schulman, author of P.S.
“What’s possible after loss? Ann Hood’s stories aim to find out by tracing the lives of families and couples blown apart by divorce, death, abandonment, and other departures. What’s left? Pain, tenuous new attachments, and hope, all of which Hood explores in her energetic new collection. Wry, entertaining, and entirely of the moment, An Ornithologist’s Guide to Life offers up honest examples of how people in the twenty-first century manage to carry on.”
—Debra Spark, author of The Ghost of Bridgetown “Ann Hood’s writing is an unusual combination of the delicate and the fierce. The stories in her collection feature characters whose lives are as eccentric, imperfect, and mysterious as our own. An Ornithologist’s Guide to Life is one of those collections that is a pure pleasure to dip into, for its author has so much to say, and we really want to listen.”
—Meg Wolitzer, author of Surrender, Dorothy “Winging her way through caverns, kitchens, tattoo parlors, and tourist destinations, Ann Hood blesses with extraordinarism the most ordinary inhabitants of our world, proving yet again she is a rare literary bird who should be on the life list of every reader, and writer.” —Suzanne Strempek Shea, author of Songs from a Lead-Lined Room