You've Told Me Before
Well-to-do but emotionally adrift East Coasters grapple with unsatisfying marriages, generational divides, and family secrets in Jennifer Anne Moses’s short story collection You’ve Told Me Before.
In one story, a seventy-year-old prepares to leave her husband for her first and true love, a relationship that she blames her now-senile mother for thwarting decades ago. In “Summer Rental,” a woman’s life is upended when she discovers information her husband and children kept from her during a past vacation. Most of the heroes are middle-aged or older, though younger ones appear in stories like “The Charlotte Situation,” in which a woman struggles with feelings for her self-centered best friend from college, who is in love with someone else.
Jewish characters and references abound, with many people bearing “the weight of four thousand years of Jewish history and untold distant European relatives who’d gone up in smoke.” Some stories foreground this subject matter, such as “The Jewish Wars,” in which a magazine editor rages against a Jewish novelist whom she perceives as ignorant about Judaism, with unexpected consequences.
In straightforward language, Moses portrays characters who are ordinary and who, despite being affluent and successful, stumble through life. They are interesting because of their flawed inner selves, which are depicted with both empathy and gentle ridicule. The stories deal with plenty of dark subject matter, including physical abuse, abortion, illness, and death, but the tone is often lighthearted and humorous. The drawback is the abrupt endings, which undercut the buildup of the narratives. Characters navigate complex situations, but rather than suggesting a resolution or leaving open various possibilities, many of the stories just stop.
In the short story collection You’ve Told Me Before, people attempt to come to terms with their lives with varying degrees of success.
Reviewed by
Yelena Furman
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
