Review

As noted elsewhere, this is actually 3 novellas, a fact noted nowhere on the cover of the paperbook edition.

Brief plot summary (applies mostly to all 3 stories): 1. Some terrible thing happens. 2. You get to know the people involved in that terrible thing. 3. You start to like some of those people. 4. Some even worse thing happens. 5. The people die, mostly, or are physically or emotionally scarred for life.

Terrific writing, for the most part, except when Harrison tries to go all philosophical and lyrical and starts trying to sound like Faulkner (and why would anyone do that?). The big strength of these stories is that pull you in right from the first page: no dawdling about setting up character and place. Harrison manages to get the plot moving from the first paragraph and never lets up; character and setting are defined as part of the unfolding of the plot. Impressive.

Metadata