When asked how much longer writers could spin love stories before exhausting the time-worn theme and genre altogether, Chekhov replied, "As long as there's 'he said,' and then, 'she said.'"

This deceptively simple truth is what continues to fascinate and challenge Isaac Bashevis Singer. To fathom the depths of being between those two pronouns—and, ultimately, their relationship to the divine Him/Her—is at the heart of all Singer's fiction. Nowhere, though, is it more skillfully explored than in his short stories, which, like Chekhov's, compress intricate dramas into a few single pages….

[In "Old Love"] Singer again investigates love's many guises and guiles…. [But] he slightly adjusts his focus. Of the 18 stories here, almost all detail the singular search for and expression of love among older characters….

Singer's characters divide into two camps: the Gimpels, the holy fools blessed and blighted by a fierce...