“Yancy breaks through her characters’ surfaces of isolation and pretense to explore the uncharted yet universal depths of human emotion. Opening with the title story, a vignette about a couple, both geneticists, grappling with their son’s muscular dystrophy in the midst of their own professional research on the subject, the author focuses on subjects that walk a fascinating line between deeply private struggle and performative interactions with the outside world. Her characters are wrapped up in their own lives, defined in some way by a significant but not all-encompassing facet of themselves until they are shaken from their complacency. . . . All these stories, many of which center on the medical industry, are meticulously wrapped up in layers of interiority, awareness of the outside gaze, and what it means to straddle the public and the private. The author’s characters are deeply flawed but not irredeemable; they are delightfully and infuriatingly human, sympathetic without invoking pity, and complex without being inscrutable. Subtle but powerful, this collection is a moving portrait of what it means to be seen and to see ourselves.”—Kirkus Reviews
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