I've never read anything from MacLaverty before, so I wasn't sure what I was getting reading into this new collection. I want to say I "enjoyed" it, but I don't think that's the right word. These stories feature loss as the main theme and that may have been too "on the nose" when compared to today's world/situation for me to truly enjoy them. Did I not become completely immersed in them because my life right now is overloaded with loss? I think so. Still, I appreciated MacLaverty's gorgeous words and felt that he did offer a tiny bit of hope in the face of death and fear.

And, frankly, I'm assuming that's why MacLaverty gravitated toward writing these. As a human on the Earth in 2022 during a pandemic, we're all immersed in this same situation and trying to find ways to grapple with it. Authors use writing to make sense of things the struggle with but to also share their own worries; I see MacLaverty doing that here.

All his stories deal with loss, but also seem to offer hope by insinuating loss is a universal concept and part of what makes us human. My favorite story is "The End of Days: Vienna 1918." In Vienna, MacLaverty draws a fictional picture of real-life artist Egon Schiele's experience with the Spanish flu in 1918. The flu killed Schiele's pregnant wife and then Egon three days later. This intimate story has him sitting at her bedside and listening to his child's heartbeat in utero as she--and the baby--dies. It's incredibly sad and moving. MacLaverty's quiet writing fits the moment perfectly; yet speaks to the communal nature of death with imagery of Schiele drawing sketches of his wife and then burning them.

If you're looking for some quiet yet powerful stories by a star of the genre, this might be the collection for you. I"m determined to give it another go and try to savor it; it'll just be when real life is less challenging.