If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This Book

Heralding the arrival of a stunning new voice in American fiction, Robin Black’s If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This takes readers into the minds and hearts of people navigating the unsettling transitions that life presents to us all.
 
Written with maturity and insight, and in beautiful, clear-eyed prose, these stories plumb the depths of love, loss, and hope. A father struggles to forge an independent identity as his blind daughter prepares for college. A mother comes to terms with her adult daughter’s infidelity, even as she keeps a disturbing secret of her own. An artist mourns the end of a romance while painting a dying man’s portrait. An accident on a trip to Italy and an unexpected connection with a stranger cause a woman to question her lifelong assumptions about herself.

    Brilliant, hopeful, and fearlessly honest, If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This illuminates the truths of human relationships, truths we come to recognize in these characters and in ourselves. 

Publishers Weekly

The stories in Black's solid debut collection are fraught with loss, usually of a loved one. Evocative and lyrical, the characters' introspections, while sometimes overwrought, are balanced by the sharp dialogue. In “The Guide,” a father takes his blind teenage daughter to meet her new seeing-eye dog and is forced to confront her independence. While painting a portrait of a man with Alzheimer's, the aging main character of “Immortalizing John Parker” grapples with the recent death of her lover. The title story is the tale of neighboring couples battling over a fence, told from the perspective of the wife with terminal cancer. In “Pine,” a woman must decide whether to move on from the memory of her dead husband to begin a love affair with her male best friend. Each story is carefully crafted, though Black is at her best when she resists the impulse toward tidiness. (Apr.)