Blue in Chicago | 
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pickThis was amazing. Like looking over someone's shoulder into a completely different life (for most of the stories, as a divorced Jewish woman in Chicago fifty plus years ago).The last story (novella) was a bit too experimental for me, but it still left an impact.
(Published in the US with a different title)
Once upon a time cataloging had been the special responsibility of the head librarian. Now there had been a reorganization; the librarians had been freed from their musty cubby holes, ordered in other words into circulation. The job had switched from archives to public relations. That was the idea---not Mrs. Speer's idea at all. She had put up with it at first. Then her husband died. It was a bad time for her. She resumed cataloging.
But it surprised me to learn that it's the same in the country, that people talk about the crime, they are preoccupied with crime-and all that goes with it. Fear and violence are by-blows of our modern life. They feel this life encroaching, closing in on them. The fear of crime is profoundly a class fear: the fear of becoming a victim, of joining the ranks of the expendables...
