In Roxana Robinsons lucid and elegant prose, her characters inner worlds open up to us, revealing private emotional cores that are familiar in their needs, their secrets, and their longings. These people tell us the truthnot only about themselves, their relationships, and their lives, but about ourselves as well.In Family Christmas, a young girl takes a holiday trip to her grandparents, where the formal atmosphere is shattered by a mysterious and chaotic event that she knows shes too young to understand but struggles to comprehend. In Blind Man, a college professor copes with the onslaught of grief after his daughters death. In The Face Lift, two college friends renew their bond across a great cultural divide. The sad and hilarious Assistance flawlessly details the tragicomic aspects of ageingseen through the eyes of a daughter-turned-caretaker. The terrors of illness are explored in The Treatment, and in Assez, a trip to Provence reveals the true volatility of loveand reminds us that we often dont realize that what we have is enough until its gone. A Perfect Stranger powerfully and affectingly examines the complex, intricate network of experiences that binds us to one another. These stories are tender, raw, lovely, and fineand they reaffirm Roxana Robinsons place at the forefront of modern literature.From the Hardcover edition.