Night Train

Part commonplace book, part a set of highly wrought novels-in-pill form, the stories gathered here might be termed autobiographical mini-fables. Reading them in one go is a bit like staring into a pocket mirror around new corners; the angles and insights are quietly astonishing. In one, our narrator climbs up into a hayloft to find a box his son wants: "This morning at 11:30, in the full sun, I go and look in the last uninspected place...where I haven't been for years. I climb over boxes and shelving, and open the door. A frightened owl flies straight at me, dead quiet, as quiet as a shadow can fly, I look into his eyes--he's a large owl, it's not strange that I'm frightened too, we frighten each other. I myself thought that owls never move in the daytime. What the owl thinks about me, I don't know."