The Kindness of Strangers
A common theme among these stories is the random and transformative power of strangers' kindness. The chance encounters of people bring back memories or unintentionally unlock future connections, bringing people into community. For the woman in "Love begins in winter," the kindness of one woman to learn the birdman's name leads her to find Bruno, who becomes her lover. Although Jonathan is not her brother, as she had hoped, he becomes an integral figure in her and Bruno's relationship as a conduit for their having met. Both Jonathan and the woman who asked his name are figures in the narrator's story, but they participate unintentionally and through simple gestures toward one another, as strangers.
Making Family
Each of the narrators of these stories communicates an experience of loneliness and how they overcame it, not thanks to themselves. They are recipients of extraordinary meetings with people, but the encounters present opportunities to whicht the narrators respond. In the story of "The Missing Statues," for instance, Molly is given the chance to meet the handsome stranger, Richard, when he offers her and her son tiramisu. If she had said no, she would have continued on her same lonely path of single-motherhood (which is to say her particular situation was lonely, not single-motherhood in general), but, since she said yes, she opened the door to meeting this man whom both she and her son adore.
Similarly, Goerge in "The City of Windy Trees" is given the chance to meet his long-lost daughter, Charlotte. Having not known he had a daughter nor even remembered her mother well, he could've been frightened at the letter and ignored the chance to meet his daughter. George is lonely, however. He misses family and leaps at the chance to take back one of his own, even coming to enjoy the friendship of Philip, Marie's new fiance.
Loneliness
Van Booy's characters are all fighting battles against loneliness. Their circumstances differ, but these disparate narrators are all connected in their plights of loneliness. For some -- like the narrator in "Love begins in winter" and Molly -- they are mourning the past, when they were plugged into family and community and even happy. Those days have long gone, now, though, and they struggle to allow themselves the vulnerability to connect with people again. Others, like George, Walter, and Bruno, are just living their lives when opportunities to expand their horizons and get close to somebody enter the picture. They readily agree to choose vulnerability with these women in order to combat the residual loneliness of their solitary existences.
