If Bukowski and Flannery O'Connor would have had a child and read it only Raymond Carver for his bedtime stories, then this collection would have been the result. Dark and relevant to this detached generation, They Always Leave shows us the inevitability of everyone we know leaving us in some manner and the tragic comedy of human actions that comes along with it. In the second part of this collection Roof Alexander writes of thieves that can't be put in jail, of the ones who steal pride, hearts, beauty, and reality. These stories evoke the delusions of love, the beauty of destruction, the unreasonable affect of time, and the desire of fame and its cause of irrational behavior. Alexander is able to capture the inner humiliation of youthful naivety while still leaving open the possibility of life. Though the stories deal with seemingly hopeless themes, there is still a narrow ray of sunshine left in between the details for the reader to interpret and take with them after the page has ended.