Deborah Eisenberg Puts the Politics In Prose

When painter arrives, she finds their paradise is really a chaotic circus; the only other artist in residence is a soul-sick satirical puppeteer. Ray has bought up much of the local farmland and planted eucalyptus, a flammable crop in a combustible area, making refugees of the locals, who flee the island each night in boats, "straggling down a dirt road toward the water, hauling little carts piled with bundles of stuff." [...]the fact that Collected Stories clocks in at just under 1,000 pages and that Your Duck Is My Duck is only her fifth book speaks to a salient detail about Eisenberg's short stories: they're not that short; they're around 40 pages each at the small end and many stretch to novella length.