A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You

By R.Z. Sheppard

In these eight tales, frisky and wryly sympathetic Bloom, a Connecticut psychotherapist, introduces a heterodox band of characters that includes a girl awaiting transsexual surgery at a "gender reassignment" clinic. Bloom's specialty is flipping a taboo on its head. "I didn't want to shock God," says a woman who has made love in a synagogue. "What would have shocked God? Two more naked people, trying to wrestle time to a halt?" Maybe three.

--By R.Z. Sheppard