Where We Are Now: Short Stories

A collection of stories that Carolyn Osborn has developed over two decades, Where We Are Now is about a single family, the Moores. Marianne is the main narrator of these stories about her mother’s family. In the first tale, The Greats, her relatives are so distant Marianne can only give brief glimpses of the eccentric Moores. The Grands, an O. Henry Prize-winning story, first introduced readers to many of the characters who inhabit Where We Are Now. By knowing the Moores, we begin to know Marianne, who tries to understand them. Curious as she is, she must continually accept the mystery of reality. Aware of the need for family mythology, she orders her world as best she can with what she is given by reacting, reflecting, inventing, and enlarging on the fragments. Other narrators reveal omissions Marianne can never know. Marianne’s life and the lives of the Moores have a definitively southern flavor; they mirror fading 19th-century morality, an acceptance of eccentricity, the habit of storytelling, a strong consciousness of place, and the influence as well as the particularity of family. These stories are an attempt to show the failures and triumphs of love, the necessity of forgiveness, and the usefulness of different sorts of families.