Each story explores a different aspect of the character’s life and shines the spotlight on different parts of his or her personality. In the best of such anthologies, the stories build upon one another, adding layer after layer of complexity and contradiction until the character’s inner life—the most guarded thoughts and feelings—are exposed, and in the process, we, the fortunate readers, are able to gain a deeper insight into our own guarded thoughts and feelings. And isn’t that the true value of stories? We open an anthology and begin reading, anticipating both the pleasure to come from the reading itself and the way in which the stories will take us outside of ourselves for a brief time and provide a new perspective that can help us to make sense of our own lives. Flesh and Blood and Other Stories by Michael Lister is that kind of enriching experience. The character whose life opens up for us is John Jordan, a man of irony and contradictions, which make him real, like an old friend we thought we knew who continues to surprise us.
