Do the windows open?

The narrator of these highly original stories, all of which have appeared in The New Yorker, surveys the world with deadpan wit and candor. She's a photographer who has been attempting for three years to photograph a world-renowned reproductive surgeon/comedian who can't sit still long enough for his picture to be taken. Her other projects include photographing Anne Sexton's childhood home and Walden Pond. Along the way she keeps searching for some sign of sanity and order amid the mediocrity, waste, pointlessness, vulgarity, junk food, and TV programs of contemporary America. She's an astute observer of modern life's strange complexities - windows that don't open, the footwear of endodontists, and husbands who don't talk - and at the same time she's hilariously and poignantly caught up in them. . The decline of our culture and everyday decency are brought into sharp focus by this unique, besieged sensibility, as is the beauty of vegetarianism, the use of Mozart for transcending root-canal therapy, and the heartache of floor refinishing and fluorescent lighting. In Do the Windows Open? Julie Hecht, with her distinctive voice and wry humor, has given us a tragi-comedy of missed connections and opportunities, vividly illuminating the way we live now.