To read: intrigued by the review in the NYTBR.

What happens when principles are confronted with real life? How much are people willing to sacrifice for an ideology, and how much are they willing to sacrifice ideology for an easier life? Who are the fools, the people standing up for what they believe in no matter what, or the people who compromise their ideals to get along with family, with lovers, with society?

Favourite stories: Fools and Two Opinions. Underwhelmed by Better, it could've been its title. Intrigued by the sympathetic depictions of terrible men, especially since this is a relatively recent book. ( )

Well crafted and well-written but not especially moving. I liked the linked element, in which the character of one story shows up in another in a sideways kinds of way (as the child of a main character, or the grown-up version of a previous young character, etc). ( )

I may need to add another star.

I loved these stories - lightly interconnected but each one could stand on its own. When is it wise to be a fool for something - for love, for ideals, for money?

Beautiful and thought provoking. ( )

As in her wonderful collection Ideas of Heaven, Joan Silber again creates a loosely connected 'ring of stories.' Characters from one tale drop into another decades later, sometimes as a mere mention, sometimes as an older but perhaps no wiser self. But what connects them all is a sense of loss, a search for meaning, and a link to the spirit of anarchy. And, of course, the lingering concern that one has been played for a fool.

The title story, first in the collection, sets the tone and establishes the framework. It's the 1920s, and Vera, born and raised in India by missionary parents, and her husband Joe are living in a beach house with a group of fellow anarchists whose main goal is to save Sacco and Vanzetti from the death penalty. Despite their earnestness, hypocrisy abounds--and lives begin to change. No one ends up following the expected path. One of the story's main characters is Dorothy Day, who later became a founder of the Catholic Worker movement.

In the course of "Fools," we learn that one of the wild young things, Betsy, left her husband Norman and ran off with an older speakeasy owner to run a hotel in Palm Beach. The second story, "The Hanging Fruit," focuses on their ne'er-do-well son, Rudy, who flees to Paris after several damaging escapades, only to be made a fool of again. One of his Parisian girlfriends reappears fifty years later in the collection's final story, "Buying and Selling," with an American friend, who happens to be one of Vera's daughters. Vera's older daughter, Louise, narrates "Two Opinions." Her father Joe was the only one of the original anarchists who stuck to his ideals; but the question is, was it really the right thing to do? And how has it affect her life? "Better" tells the story of Marcus, a newly-single gay man spending a weekend with friends and reminiscing about his former partner. He picks up an old book--which just happens to be a memoir written by Betsy's ex-husband. In "Going Too Far' we meet Gerard, the son of an employee at the Palm Beach hotel. He's searching for something, he's not quite sure what, but he recognizes a similar spirit in Adinah. It's only after they marry and become parents that he realizes that their spiritual destinies lie in different directions.

I'm not sure this description gives a very good sense of Silber's loosely connected collection, so let me quote a blurb from the back cover by Jim Shepard that does it much better:

"Fools is a wonderfully winning exploration of impetuousness in all of its appealing and appalling forms, and its deftly interconnected stories are devoted to those dreamers who act rashly and out of their better natures, who never quit asking the world, Can't you do better than that?--a question certain to become increasingly urgent as this twenty-first century progresses."

Silber is a wonderfully perceptive writer who creates characters that are simultaneously unique and familiar. Although I still think Ideas of Heaven is her best collection, Fools is also highly recommended. ( )