Review of Alone With You by Marisa Silver

Alone With You, the latest book of short stories by Marisa Silver, was a quick read. The book is made up of 10 stories. Isolation, illness and parental issues, sometimes all at once, pervade Alone With You. Overall, I thought the stories were uneven. Some of them were sparkling, and others fell flat. I did find that the further I got in to the book, the more I liked it.

"Temporary," the first story, is about a small-town girl who goes to Los Angeles and moves in with a dramatic young woman. This story really didn't work for me-- it didn't seem to go anywhere. I didn't like "Three Girls," either. It's the story of three sisters with problematic parents and an unexpected knock at the door on a cold night.

But there were stories I did like. In the title story, a woman goes to the Sahara to ride camels with her husband, her son, and the son's girlfriend while on a quest to figure out who and where she should be. In "Night Train to Frankfurt," a 30-something woman with career and relationship problems travels to Germany with her cancer-stricken mother to visit a clinic. In "In the New World," a Polish immigrant to California grapples with an Americanized teenage son.

As for the writing style, sometimes I was in awe, and other times, I thought the language didn't work at all.

Just One Pink gives Alone With You a 7.5.