PositiveThe RumpusWhat make these stories more than flights of fancy is the weight of their characters and settings, as if Garrison Keillor took his Lake Wobegon creations a bit more seriously ... The details seem both accurate and incisive, so knowing, that it’s as if Horrocks had access to several dossiers and also acted as a psychotherapist to her characters ... Horrocks’s characters are often displaced people or those who have suffered a metaphoric form of displacement or loss. It’s worth noting that in many of the stories, the father is either absent or on the cusp of departing, leaving a void like a wound not quite healed. Not that Horrocks is earnest or solemn. \'Zero Conditional\'...is a dark comedy ... \'The Untranslatables\' has linguistic brio enough for three stories, a fascination with words ... Unless Horrocks happens to be thirty or more different people, her stories are the bravura feat of a ventriloquist, which is what any good author should be ... Horrocks isn’t after tragedy or comedy, though she’s adept at both. She’s intent on the project that so plagued the modernists: how to present life itself.
