There's Something I Want you to Do, Stories

The book follows a group of Minneapolis citizens, including a pediatrician, a young drug addict, a translator and a car mechanic all of whom, like the rest of us, crave love and meaning and moral goodness while confined by the shortcomings and idiosyncrasies of their own personalities. These characters slip in and out of one another's stories, and while some never meet, they eventually constitute, if not exactly a community, a shimmering web of interconnectedness.

Nobody would mistake this book for a novel in stories; there are no throughlines, and the material is too far-ranging. But Baxter clearly has had great sport constructing his inventive linkages. A request moment using the book's title is planted either verbatim or slightly askew in each story like a bean in a Christmas cake. Some requests hit with the weight of commandment; at least one is a joke. (New York Times Book Review)