Adverbs is a novel about love — a bunch of different people, in and out of different kinds of love. The title of each chapter is an adverb that describes the “love” story contained therein. Some of the characters are hopelessly in love with people who don’t know they exist — a teenage boy working in a multi-plex next to the indiffferent girl he loves or the ghost that follows a woman home from the park. Some are really in love with ideas and if so, they would love this book if they could somehow escape and then read it. Adverbs is made up of various interrelated stories and characters who share names but may or may not be the same, and there’s a volcano under San Francisco that will probably erupt at any moment. As the author says, “It is not in the nouns. The miracle is in the adverbs, the way things are done.”
“collectively” is a story about a bunch of people who really love a guy they hardly know. There’s just something about him that’s lovable, who knows what it is? He’s got it and now he also has a group of folks dropping in for a visit so they can get to know him better.
