"The New York Stories is a combination of three previous volumes by Tanzer: Repetition Patterns (2008), So Different Now (2011), and After the Flood (2014). While each catalogs life in Two Rivers—a stand-in of sorts for Tanzer’s hometown of Binghamton, NY—they do so much more than that. Throughout, Tanzer has his characters battle with the mundane as well as the life-changing in small town America. In “The Babysitter,” for example, the narrator wrestles with memories he has of his babysitter, Tracey, and her friends. While everything—from sleeping around to having babies out of wedlock with teenagers—seems to be going on around him, the narrator sits and observes, steady as a rock. Towards the end, he says, “And me, I never leave the neighborhood. I don’t see any reason to. It’s quiet and I like it that way. I stay long enough, in fact, to watch everyone eventually move back.” It’s this point of view—that of the diligent observer—that makes Tanzer’s stories so rich and so engaging. His eye for detail is the eye that his characters use to get through life."
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