One reviewer on allconsuming.com wrote off No One Belongs Here More Than You, saying that most of the characters "are emotionally stunted." Why that in itself would be a flaw deserves examination, but I wanted to note that the point is essentially false anyway.

July's character's are not stunted—in fact they have huge emotional lives. Instead, they seem inactive, or they don't realize their emotional impulses: they dream of things, but don't do. Take the narrator of "The Shared Patio," who lives a whole romance in one short dream, while her paramour is having a seizure. Or "The Man on the Stairs," a fantasia extrapolated from a few isolated moments of noise in a quiet house.

No, these characters are emotionally large, but they don't seem to have the knack of acting on their feelings—that's the pathos. Their are exceptions, too, as with "The Sister" and "How to Tell Stories to Children," and this contrast makes the emotional paralysis a clear theme for the book. It's also reflected in Me And You and Everyone We Know, where July's protagonist seems to be living emotionally in a larger room than the one where she acts—although there, she does take action, by making artworks, and I'm enchanted by the man in that film who lights his hand on fire to mark a change.

Let's all remember, friends, to act, to take action.