In the Eyes, in the Mouth — Adrienne Ross

This intriguing collection of short stories portrays the complexities of love, unrequited and requited, fantasized and realized. The characters, who yearn for connection despite their ambivalence and their varying abilities to achieve it, range in age from sixteen to seventy-five. They have compelling lives, jobs, and interests, yet they continue to pursue some kind of resolution within the complexities of their situations.
A graduate student attempts to reconcile her thesis topic with the interesting man in the apartment above.
A psychotherapist prefers her dentist to her new lover.
A desolate gynecologist is visited by her alter ego.
To a college professor's unsatisfied lover, murder appears to be the only solution to their increasingly uncommunicative relationship.
Whether they live in the city or the country, Ross's characters struggle as they look for love. Alternately self-aware and absurdly self-deluding, they cope with the difficulties inherent in contemporary relationships, trying to understand themselves and their friends. They contradict themselves in ways that are laughable, yet they are always recognizable and sympathetic.