From Goodreads: The nation’s capital that serves as the setting for the stories in Edward P. Jones’s prizewinning collection, Lost in the City, lies far from the city of historic monuments and national politicians. Jones takes the reader beyond that world into the lives of African American men and women who work against the constant threat of loss to maintain a sense of hope. From “The Girl Who Raised Pigeons” to the well-to-do career woman awakened in the night by a phone call that will take her on a journey back to the past, the characters in these stories forge bonds of community as they struggle against the limits of their city to stave off the loss of family, friends, memories, and, ultimately, themselves.

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I had to read this compilation of short stories for a course I took in order to teach AP classes.  Quite honestly, I’m not really one to enjoy compilations of short stories—I tend to avoid them in the classroom and I rarely read them for fun because I don’t care for them.  Needless to say, I really didn’t care for this book.  The short stories weren’t interesting to me, and I personally found a majority of them inappropriate.  Perhaps I’m old fashioned, but I don’t think that every story needs references to sex or cussing to validate it, and I find myself becoming uncomfortable when I read stories like these. 

These stories were frustrating for me in that many of them just seem to end with no conclusion.  They read in the same fashion as Flannery O’Conner, and as I wasn’t a fan of her writing either, it makes sense that these short stories also wouldn’t be for me.  I do understand the premise for these short stories as Jones is writing what he knows, but I personally need something much more upbeat.  One star.