In her New Yorker review of The KGB Bar Reader, Daphne Merkin called attention to Ken Foster’s introduction: His last sentence … caught me up short, because it seemed both so obvious and so original: ‘And that the best writers reveal something about themselves that a smarter person would choose to hide.’ In this collection, Foster does exactly that, as he explores the limits of what we can expect from others, and from ourselves. From New Orleans to Portland to Manhattan and Paris, Foster’s characters circle each other as well as their own fates in fourteen stories that evoke Mary Gaitskill, Lorrie Moore, and Denis Johnson. The heart of what we’re looking for in life provides the backbone to these surprising and poetic pieces – in which Foster ultimately reveals the gap between what we hope for and the kind we’re likely to get.