B. D. Love writes eloquently of troubled lives and troubled loves, capturing as well as anyone writing today the ways in which we both crave and fear intimacy. Two practical-joking school friends betray each other, a man battles his pitifully irascible neighbors, a professor grows infatuated with an immigrant B-girl, a grieving widow becomes obsessed with helping a homeless man, two Vietnamese students learning English struggle with Swift's "A Modest Proposal"-Love's stories illuminate those critical moments when, suddenly, we can save another's sanity and dignity, when we most urgently feel our human commitment to each other. Punch Line is a beautiful collection from a contemporary master. Jay Rogoff, author of Venera and The Art of Gravity