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Title: Promising, but...
Review: Admittedly, my interest in Maile Meloy initially came entirely from my enjoyment of her younger brother Colin Meloy's band, the Decemberists. Meloy's debut short story collection is extremely promising in a lot of key areas: her stories have a strong sense of place, and she's got both a good ear for dialogue and a strong handle on narrative pacing. Things actually happen in these stories, in other words, something that can't always be said about similar short story collections. However, it seems that Colin inherited all of the family's sense of humor genes, as Maile's stories are almost relentlessly bleak and often downright depressing. A wider variety of emotional shadings would go a long way towards enhancing this collection.
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