In these deft, acutely funny, heartbreaking stories, Kate Walbert delves into the hearts and minds of women in the age of anxiety. Her characters are uneasy in one way or another; they all yearn for connection; they all struggle to find meaning in their lives as mothers, wives, and daughters; they all try to find their own voices often within isolated, and isolating, circumstances. In the dazzling opening story "M&M World," a mother is plunged into panic when she briefly loses one of her daughters at the Times Square store. In "Slow the Heart," a mother tries to ease tension at the dinner table with Roses and Thorns, the game she knows the Obamas played in the White House. In "Radical Feminists," a woman skating with her two children encounters the man who derailed her career a decade earlier. And in the story, "A Mother is Someone Who Tells Jokes," a grieving mother reflects on the kindergarten project that preceded her son's autism diagnosis.