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I never know what to expect when I read the short stories of an author for the first time. Will they have twist endings? Will they be bizarre? Will nothing happen?

Millhauser was a pleasant surprise. He writes with an imagined nostalgia, for things that never really existed, like magic carpets and intricately carved snow people. Some of the stories are more about the magic found in the mundane, like the time between when you get to the ocean and you first stick a toe in, and these were my favorite. The least interesting (to me) were those about people who DO magic, like magicians and wizards, and I ended up skimming those.

One of my favorites was "We Others," told from the perspective of a ghost. It starts like this:
"We others are not like you. We are more prickly, more jittery, more restless, more reckless, more secretive, more desperate, more cowardly, more bold. We live at the edges of ourselves, not in the middle places. We leave that to you. Did I say: more watchful? That above all. We watch you, we follow you, we spy on you, we obsess over you. We crave your attention. We hunger for a sign...."

Interested yet? ;)