Uncommon Type

Seventeen short stories bound together by a quiet motif: a typewriter turns up somewhere in each one. Hanks uses that conceit to roam across American life, from a returning war veteran to a group of friends chasing a homemade space flight to an immigrant’s first bewildering days in New York. The tone is warm and unhurried, more interested in decency and small wonders than in twists. It reads exactly as you might expect from Hanks, generous, observant and fond of the people it describes.