Nothing with Strings: NPR's Beloved Holiday Stories

NOTHING WITH STRINGS; Bailey White; New York: Scribner's, 2008; 193pgs. Fiction

I have laughed myself sick over some of Bailey White's early stories and essays in her books "Mama Makes up Her Mind," and "Sleeping at the Starlite Motel," but her new collection, "Nothing with Strings," is more sober, with stories of Alzheimer's, unkind and oblivious family members, and missed opportunities for happiness, given and received. White, a Southerner, has a fine ear for dialect and good eye for the lay and beauty of the land--one of the finest prose
stylists of our generation. "Nothing with Strings" is memorable and cautionary--don't not see what is there--don't not do what you can.

LW