Bausch, Richard. “Aren’t You Happy for Me?” The Stories of Richard Bausch. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2003.
Reason read: June is (still) short story month.
Richard Bausch has this amazing ability to make you feel as if you have been plopped down smack in the middle of the drama belonging to someone else. In “Someone to Watch Over Me” the reader could have been another restaurant patron at a nearby table, overhearing Ted and Marlee’s marital spat. In “Aren’t You Happy For Me?” the reader is witness to a different kind of marital breakdown. This time two parents at the end of their marriage react differently to their daughter’s dual announcement of pregnancy and engagement to a man forty plus years her senior. Ballinger is hung up on the fact the man is nearly twenty years older than himself while Ballinger’s wife can only hope her daughter finds happiness for some period of time.
Author fact: I am reading four other titles by Richard Bausch.
BookLust Twist” from More Book Lust in the obvious chapter “Good Things Come in Small Packages” (p 102).
~*LunaSea*~ 