As in earlier McMurtry novels, the many deaths in this book underscore the precariousness of life, and a melancholy sense of change and loss, shared by so many of his heroes.
The short form of the story points up Ms. Tuck's indebtedness to other writers like Joan Didion and the young Ann Beattie, and it underscores the limitations of her fictional canvas: her tendency to reinvent continually the same handful of characters and her penchant for using violent accidents to underscore the precariousness of life.
In several of the stories, the emotional tension that animates the author's most powerful work is replaced by contrived acts of violence -- a woman's loss of her children in a fire; the burning of a neighbor's house by vandals -- that are supposed to underscore the precariousness of life.
The conceit underscores the precariousness of the rebellious characters' social standing and emotional health.
The Democratic senators' response also underscores the precariousness of Comey's own position.
Sequoia's viral hit underscores the precariousness of the venture capital business.
A twilight image of the World Trade Center appears on the book's jacket, underscoring the precariousness of it all.
The contrast could not have been greater on a summer night that was a reminder of all that this sport can be in the wake of another day that underscored its precariousness.
His highly personal remarks, hitting a tone more and more common as he comes to the expected end of his tenure this year as defense secretary, also underscored the precariousness of the gains in Sangin — and across Afghanistan — as the Obama administration makes the first moves toward extracting itself from the war.
The animated surfaces underscore the works' deliberate precariousness; each arrangement of cubes, planes, rectangles and cylinders is carefully kept off balance, revealing new tensions and contradictions as the viewer moves around it or, in the case of the relatively frontal "Becca," looks straight on.
But with the American military largely operating in the background, it underscored the country's precariousness ahead of the vote.
