This is a sublime collection of short stories by a writer whose breath-taking flexibility of style gives life to an array of different voices. The stories themselves are perfectly formed vignettes based on themes including the collusion of place and memory, love, life and death and everything in between.
A former American soldier revisits Vietnam with his loving wife, only to find that she had not been wooed decades before by his western charms but had chosen him at random as her saviour from the horrors of war. A dystopian future sees the cult of body reshaping as a necessity for guarding the soul. A terminally ill actor plans his most memorable performance as Julius Caesar by actually killing himself on stage in the assassination scene. A hermit finds himself misunderstood as an unwitting, unwilling prophet and becomes imprisoned by an unwanted reputation for divinity.
Unfailingly beautiful, deceptively simple and lyrically powerful, Norminton’s tales make this collection something to be treasured and celebrated without reservation.
