In My Other Life is grounded in New York, and Joan Silber's prose has all the traits of an urban sensibility: confidence, wit, individual style, and an emotional distance that keeps the despair of city life in perspective. Each story focuses on the surprising reversal that separates an old life from the new. And, recovering from the glories of bad habits in their twenties, Silber's people move through decades of sobering conclusions and elating accidents.