In this collection of stories Lorrie Moore addresses herself to a contemporary emotional dilemma - the widening gulf between men and women, and the simultaneous yearning for and fear of closeness.

A collection of stories from Lorrie Moore, hailed as one of the greatest and most influential voices in American fiction.

With America gearing up for war in the Middle East, Tassie Keltjin, a 'half-Jewish' farmer's daughter from the plains of the Midwest, has come to university - escaping her provincial home to encounter a world of culture and politics. As her past becomes increasingly alien to her, Tassie realises she is becoming a stranger to herself.

From the opening story about a second-rate movie actress involved with a mechanic, 'Birds of America' unfolds a series of portraits of the young, the hip, the lost, the unsettled and the unhinged of modern-day America.

This book was shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. In these eight masterful stories, Lorrie Moore explores the passing of time and summons up its inevitable sorrows and comic pitfalls. Gimlet-eyed social observation, the public and private absurdities of American life, irony and half-cracked love wend their way through these stories, in which Moore is always tender, never sentimental and often heartbreakingly funny.

Complicated, awkward, funny, cruel, heartbroken, mysterious; Self-Help forms an idiosyncratic guide to female existence which is just as relevant today as it was 30 years ago. These stories are modern America at its most real, with characters sharing thoughts and experiences they could have borrowed from our own lives. This is how to deal with divorce, adultery, cancer, how to talk to your mother or become a writer, the Lorrie Moore way.