"There was no use being nice to Lane Dancie no matter how sorry you felt for her - she was a lost cause"

Lost causes and hopeless cases are made heroes in Heidi Jon Schmidt's entrancing American stories. These are a collection of misfits, certain that they are missing something from their lives, but unable to pinpoint quite what. What emerges are characters who are terribly flawed but deeply appealing: an eleven-year-old girl bound to act as the guiding force for all the adults in her life; a woman on jury duty who finds she has everything in common with the defendant; a man whose whole life can be charted from one moment of closeness to his long-dead father; a group of talentless but wildly enthusiastic would-be novelists. 'Darling?' manages at once to embrace both the comedy and pathos of everyday life.

"Scmidt's bitter wit, shot through with insecurity and self-conscious braininess, calls to mind Lorrie Moore. Her precise and elegant prose is smart and artful indeed."
'New York Times'

"A book about the frustrating, hilarious, embarrassing, transcendental business of living with love. Schmidt's stories are filled with delightful wit, spell-binding feeling and an emotional intelligence."
Peter Ho Davies, author of 'The Ugliest House in the World'