Out of the Girls’ Room and Into the Night

by Thisbe Nissen

Anchor, 198 pp., $12 (paper)

The expression of love is the center of Out of the Girls’ Room and Into the Night, an awe-inspiring collection of short stories by Thisbe Nissen, winner of the John Simmons Short Fiction Award. Nissen’s characters are young and yearning, and they come together in lovely and unexpected ways. Although Nissen’s characters are generally blessed — traveling Deadheads, college housemates, wealthy New York teens — Nissen bestows them with earnesty and explores their desires with gravity. They seem to have realized one character’s observation that safety is “a point of contact.” And perhaps, Nissen suggests, that’s what love is as well. (reviewed 11-26-99)

This article appears in December 8 • 2000.

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