Watching Oksana and Other Stories

Watching Oksana features disparate voices, most of them speaking from the late twentieth century. The opening group of stories, “What You Do for Love,” is linked thematically, all of its protagonists in uniquely intense yet familiar parent–child relationships. “American Snapshot, 1993” is a stand-alone story in a more experimental vein that takes an oblique look at race. The “Laura” stories feature the same character at different points in her life, the last describing Laura’s dreamlike experience of the death of her mother. In the collection’s final story, “Swimming,” the main character’s desperate wish for a child leaves her emotionally numbed at the loss of her husband.