conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is a description for a book titled The Fate of Mice about Reed, I>Starred, Review with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Short Stories & Anthologies?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: <I>Starred Review. Spanning the past 20 years of the author's career, the eight previously published and three new stories in this outstanding collection (after her 2005 novel <I>The Necessary Beggar</I>) display the author's versatility. The fine title story about an IQ-enhanced mouse named Rodney recalls "Flowers for Algernon." "Gestella" centers on a woman werewolf whose accelerated aging complicates her doomed marriage to a self-obsessed professor. In "Jo's Hair," the author imagines remarkable alternate fates for Louisa May Alcott's little woman, Jo March, and her chopped and sold chestnut braid. The quintessential fairy tale "Stormdusk" depicts a child worried about her mother, a trapped snow maiden; the wise, whimsical concluding gem, "GI Jesus," addresses friendship and sacred smalltown "miracles." the author's genre-bending short fiction defies categorization and blends humor with pathos.<I> (Mar.)</I> <BR>Copyright &copy; Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the first sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Spanning the past 20 years of the author's career, the eight previously published and three new stories in this outstanding collection (after her 2005 novel <I>The Necessary Beggar</I>) display the author's versatility. The fine title story about an IQ-enhanced mouse named Rodney recalls "Flowers for Algernon." "Gestella" centers on a woman werewolf whose accelerated aging complicates her doomed marriage to a self-obsessed professor. In "Jo's Hair," the author imagines remarkable alternate fates for Louisa May Alcott's little woman, Jo March, and her chopped and sold chestnut braid. The quintessential fairy tale "Stormdusk" depicts a child worried about her mother, a trapped snow maiden; the wise, whimsical concluding gem, "GI Jesus," addresses friendship and sacred smalltown "miracles." the author's genre-bending short fiction defies categorization and blends humor with pathos.<I> (Mar.)</I> <BR>Copyright &copy; Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the first four paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Fate of Mice
  The same Christmas day that Jo's father tells her he could find nothing to buy with her hair, the dissipated young man steals his first kiss from the worldly young lady, and strokes the smooth plait of Jo's hair, little dreaming that it once belonged to a poor clergyman's daughter. On the day Jo's sister Meg, to Jo's great relief, becomes engaged to a poor but honest tutor, Jo's hair is the central ornament in a costume which, before that evening is out, has been complemented by a dazzling diamond ring beside which even Jo's hair fades into insignificance.
  And now, after a decorous three-year wait, Meg and the tutor decorously marry, as Jo mourns the first break in the circle of sisters. On that same day, the worldly young lady dies in childbirth—we would, of course, never dream of questioning whether the stillborn child was actually her husband's—and Jo's hair becomes the stolen property of a servant who carries it off with her into another household. As Jo dismisses the wealthy, dashing neighbor who so desperately wants to marry her, the housemaid who wears Jo's hair attempts—with far less success—to repulse the dishonorable advances of her gentleman employer. Jo flees her neighbor's heartbreak by going to New York to write sensation stories; the disgraced housemaid flees to a lying-in home and, after abandoning her baby on the steps of a church, finds herself reduced to acting bit parts in bad melodramas.
  Now Jo's hair smells of greasepaint and cheap gin and the old, tired dust that collects in theaters. Scolded by Professor Bhaer—her destiny, her doom, the only desire she is allowed—for writing immoral trash, Jo resolves to be virtuous and puts away her pen. Little does she suspect that her hair, forever beyond virtue now, lies in a moldy trunk of stage properties a mere mile from the boarding house where, obeying her fate, she met the professor.
  Jo agrees, of course. How could she not? This is her first deathbed scene, and it moves her profoundly. Young as she is, she little guesses how many others there will be, how few things she will ever be able to do for herself if she devotes her life to keeping promises to the dead. Pierced by sorrow, valiantly struggling not to rebel against the drudgery of the life she has promised to lead, she stays at home and learns to dust.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is five more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: She knew the story before I found her; they always do. It enters their blood as soon as they can follow speech, and lodges in their hearts like the promise of spring. All poor mothers tell their daughters this story, as they sit together in dark kitchens, scrubbing pots and trying to save their hands for the day when the tale becomes real. I often wonder if that first young woman was one of ours, but the facts don't matter. Like all good stories, this one is true.
  Laughing, she sits to let me plait her hair. "So serious! You never smile at me. Do magic folk never smile? Aren't you proud of me?"
  So soon, I think, and my breath catches. So soon she offers me gifts, and forgets the woman who bore her, who now lies snoring in the other room. All for the best; and yet I am visited by something very like pity. Not in this kingdom."
  What I have said is true enough, as always; and, as always, I find myself wondering if there is more than that. No matter. If Caitlin's mother suspects, she says nothing. I am the only chance she and her daughter have to approach nobility, and for the sake of that dream she has tolerated my presence, and Caitlin's odd new moods, and the schedule which keeps the girl away from work to keep her fresh for dances.
  Caitlin bends her head, and the shining braids slip through my fingers like water. "She'll come to the castle whenever she wants to, when I'm married to a prince. We'll make her beautiful too, then. I'll buy her clothing and paint for her face."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Add another sentence about Caitlin.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: She knew the story before I found her; they always do. It enters their blood as soon as they can follow speech, and lodges in their hearts like the promise of spring. All poor mothers tell their daughters this story, as they sit together in dark kitchens, scrubbing pots and trying to save their hands for the day when the tale becomes real. I often wonder if that first young woman was one of ours, but the facts don't matter. Like all good stories, this one is true. 
  Laughing, she sits to let me plait her hair. "So serious! You never smile at me. Do magic folk never smile? Aren't you proud of me?"
  So soon, I think, and my breath catches. So soon she offers me gifts, and forgets the woman who bore her, who now lies snoring in the other room. All for the best; and yet I am visited by something very like pity. "No wife has riches but from her lord, Caitlin. Not in this kingdom. "
  What I have said is true enough, as always; and, as always, I find myself wondering if there is more than that. No matter. If Caitlin's mother suspects, she says nothing. I am the only chance she and her daughter have to approach nobility, and for the sake of that dream she has tolerated my presence, and Caitlin's odd new moods, and the schedule which keeps the girl away from work to keep her fresh for dances. 
  Caitlin bends her head, and the shining braids slip through my fingers like water. "She'll come to the castle whenever she wants to, when I'm married to a prince. We'll make her beautiful too, then. I'll buy her clothing and paint for her face. "
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the last five paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I nearly groaned. If Cindy was still alive that meant they'd put her on some kind of machine, and people could keep breathing for years on those things, sucking money into the hospital faster than a drowning man gulps seawater. "Mandy, I really truly don't think she'll ever be better—"
  I did, too. The prune juice was finally working. I rushed into the bathroom and got there just in time, and sat there, just being happy, while the prune juice did what it was supposed to do. So there, Father Antsy. Even Jesus needs a body to work miracles with, and he picked mine, how do you like that? I know religious people think pride is a sin and most of the time I agree with them, but this time I felt like I hadn't had anything to feel proud of in so long that maybe I deserved it, and anyway I was mainly happy for Mandy and Cindy. And I sat there thinking about miracles, and I thought, Well, GI Jesus, how about one more miracle, how about letting us know where Hank is?
  I figured Jesus wouldn't have enough time for that, though, because he was probably on his way out of my body, now that Cindy was better. I wondered what he'd look like when he left, if maybe he'd look happy too, finally. When the juice had finished its work I looked down wondering if I'd see a tiny cross in there, or a little guy in a beard and loincloth, or what.
  Well, that was just silliness, of course. What came out was white, whiter even than the barium had been when I drank it, white as freshly bleached sheets or new snow or any of the other things people talk about when they're trying to describe whiteness—so white it looked almost like it glowed, but maybe that's because it was radioactive, I don't know. It didn't look like anything to do with Jesus, though. It looked like a big fish, and then when I flushed and it was whirling around it changed shape and looked like a bird, and then it was gone. Which just goes to show you that Dr. Stephenson was right: if you look at a shape that isn't much like anything in particular, you can see anything you want.
  So I had to laugh at myself, the way I'd given myself all those airs about pulling off a miracle. Oh, Cindy's been getting a little stronger every day since then: the next day she drank some Sprite and the day after that she sat up in bed and then she started going to the bathroom by herself and watching game shows and asking for cheeseburgers. She's coming home from the hospital tomorrow. So it sure looks like an Instant Miracle Cure, but even if it is, it probably has nothing to do with me or my intestines. Cindy just decided she wasn't ready to die, that's all—you hear stories about that all the time—or the blood tests were all wrong to begin with. You hear stories about that, too. So I'm still not going to say I'm religious. But I have been putting in a few prayers for Hank, just in case there's a God after all.