October 2009

I bought this collection on a whim a few years ago--found it cheap at an online sale--but didn’t expect much from it. Something about it, the cover or the title or something else, discouraged me from reading it. Then, a while ago, I read "Notes to My Biographer," about an old inventor with an unspecified mental illness trying to reconcile with his gay son, and still wasn’t impressed. But I’ve been on a short story marathon for the past year, so I thought I should give the book another try.

What a surprise! While there were a few so-so selections like the first story, the rest of the collection was full of rich, albeit sad and haunting, tales about people suffering from mental or physical disorders. A young doctor visits an underprivilaged patient ("The Good Doctor"), an orphaned teenager seeks out the attentions of a bully ("The Beginnings of Grief"), a young boy begins imagining the deaths of those around him ("Divination"), and others. It’s a powerful, though occasionally depressing, collection. Oh, and that cover I didn’t like at first, with the photograph of the staircase spiraling ever downward? It fits. But look closely: some people, here and there, are working their way back up.