the dead-infant speaker: 'almost doesn't sound corny'

The book grading sincerity's victory at the precise point of maximal corniness-risk, and the whole verdict lives in "almost." A woman who freebased through labor and carried her stillborn's corpse for weeks ends by asking a roomful of strangers to pray for her — the single most corn-exposed thing a person can say — and the narration, which elsewhere flays every counterfeit feeling, records that it "almost doesn't sound corny." Not that it clears corniness entirely; the book won't overclaim. But at the far end of earnest risk, "all defenses have been burned away," the corn nearly vanishes. That "almost" is the anthology's honesty in one word: sincerity can win, and the book will still tell you exactly how narrow the win is.