This Cake Is For The Party - Sarah Selecky

10 stories, remarkable for being even in their distribution of style, wit and a high degree of writing. All are about loss, and what comes before and what comes after.  The most skillful is the last in the collection, One Thousand Wax Buddhas, which plays with narrative structure and first-person perspective to tell the story of a candle-maker and his mentally ill wife. Hints of Munroe, suggestions of Carver, but Selecky makes these stories her own.