Library's review
Several of the stories are connected by their characters. There are three now-adult college friends who reappear several times, including on a trip to the moon (no, really). And there is a series of crabby newspaper columns from an old geezer reporter who thinks everything was better back in the good old days when no one had a cell phone and everyone who wasn't a white man knew their place (not that the character is written as self-aware enough to figure out that last bit).
Some of the more successful entries focus on people coming to grips with broken marriages, relationships, or families, whether those people are adult women ("A Month on Greene Street") or kids young ("A Special Weekend") and not so young ("Welcome to Mars"). Probably my favorite story was "Christmas Eve 1953," which starts out as a standardly sappy Christmas story that takes a turn into poignance that elevates it above the rest.
I'm tempted to adapt that old joke: As a writer, Tom Hanks is a great actor. But really, his writing is quite good — he mentions getting some writing coaching and advice from his friend, the late Nora Ephron, and it shows. Where the collection fails is in the ideas, which are pretty thin, and not the execution. I wouldn't go out of my way to read another book by Hanks but I wouldn't actively avoid one, either.
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Fiction. Literature. Short Stories. HTML:A collection of seventeen wonderful short stories showing that two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks is as talented a writer as he is an actor. A gentle Eastern European immigrant arrives in New York City after his family and his life have been torn apart by his country's civil war. A man who loves to bowl rolls a perfect gameâ??and then another and then another and then many more in a row until he winds up ESPN's newest celebrity, and he must decide if the combination of perfection and celebrity has ruined the thing he loves. An eccentric billionaire and his faithful executive assistant venture into America looking for acquisitions and discover a down and out motel, romance, and a bit of real life. These are just some of the tales Tom Hanks tells in this first collection of his short stories. They are surprising, intelligent, heartwarming, and, for the millions and millions of Tom Hanks fans, an absolute must-hav… (more)