RaveHarvard ReviewMost of the characters in Sara Batkie’s collection Better Times are missing something: a father, a partner, a breast. The stories that emerge from these absences are starkly beautiful. Each one seems to ask, What is left after something so important has been taken away? Often, what’s left is community, however fractured, and Batkie excels at presenting empathetic portraits of characters struggling to make sense of their relationships with their communities and with themselves ... Batkie has a talent for taking seemingly ridiculous premises and using them to craft graceful stories with a touch of humor ... the collection leaves one wondering if the possibility of \'better times\' is, and has always been, nothing more than illusion.