This is a very weird book of short stories by an American, MacArthur grant recipient, that was named as a finalist for the National Book Award.  Varying from one incomplete sentence to 48 detailed pages about the daily lives and personal characteristics of two elderly women, the stories are almost completely bare of narrative, character development, or action.  They just are and give detailed snapshots of our quotidian, mostly trivial and impression-less activities.  Not depressing, but sobering in their sense of our passing through time on this earth without leaving a trace or having an impact.  Stories about a grammar school class’s letters to a classmate with osteomyelitis (crushingly boring in its analytic details), about the ironic “Good Taste Contest” between a husband and wife, to a tour-de-force in the style of Kafka Cooks Dinner, the stories disturb while entertaining.  A thoroughly different author.