Our Strangers

A FINANCIAL TIMES. BOOK OF THE YEAR. 2023: FICTION. 'A trailblazer in the world of short-form prose' New Yorker. Lydia Davis is a virtuoso at detecting the seemingly casual, inconsequential surprises of daily life and pinning them for inspection. In Our Strangers. , conversations are overheard and misheard, a special delivery letter is mistaken for a rare white butterfly, toddlers learning to speak identify a ping-pong ball as an egg and mumbled remarks betray a marriage. In the glow of Davis's keen noticing, strangers can become like family and family like strangers. Our Strangers. is a fascinating collection that confirms the genius of a writer whose every attention is transformative.