The Strange Recital

"Someone had once said that it was the hour when God walked in the garden. It was at any rate the time when everything begins to breathe again after the long hot hours in which life is suspended...."

An eccentric elderly woman hires a younger man to tend her wild Greek garden. Here's the opening chapter of a compelling, intelligent novel about relationships, aging, and nature -- plus a great discussion afterward.

"Reverend Halvar Ingegaard rose to begin his sermon. In a shot, he was off in his maniacal style, telling of the giant skeletons and the Truth of Salvation apparent all around us. He spoke quickly then slowly, but always loud, loud, loud, thumping the pulpit, his blows deadened by the weight of the Bible beneath his fists."

A boy's life is changed when something strange is found on the family farm. Is "truth" just another belief system? Maybe we need to examine our own.

"A mutilated beggar appeared at my taxi window. He seemed no more than a teenager, but it was hard to see past the heavy scarring on his face. Half his lower jaw was missing, teeth exposed. Both arms ended like sausages just below the elbows. His voice was slurred, but youthful and polite. 'Excuse me, sir. I am crippled. Please help.'"

A young man encounters worlds he's never known. How does a venture into a foreign culture send your life on a different track? Do you have a choice? Maybe there's no going back.

"Morning came like any other. Alphonse was awake, uncertain if he had slept. He could hear the lonely song of a bird as the sky filled with gloomy light and the few remaining splintered trees were revealed, beautiful as the skeletons of ghosts." Two men whose fates are entangled in someone's story, but whose? What events lead us to where we are now, and to the self we have become?

"As the applause that had accompanied the hero to the podium began to fade, he lifted a hand to stop it. 'When you're making up your narrative as you go,' he began humbly, 'you may develop whole sections of action and dialog for one purpose, only to change your mind later on...'"

Two very short stories... do they share a common theme? Where do stories come from, anyway? Can creativity be accidental?

"Henry mashed his cigarette into a tinfoil ashtray. It was full of tar-stinking butts. He crumpled the ashtray closed and, squirming against the passenger door, stuffed the smoldering lump into his jeans like a carcinogenic pocket warmer."

Three guys drive into the mountains. Then they dig a hole. Why would a young man flirt with death? Where will it lead?

"The trouble started when he went for a walk. Or perhaps it had started earlier with the cup of coffee he drank just before going out. It wasn't so much the coffee as the milk, but that had not seemed important at the time."

A chilly walk in the woods... an unusual stranger... has something gone wrong with time, or is it always like this?

"Howling and half-naked in his torn and bloody clothing Fargo is a desperate man and dangerous to himself and others. He ricochets around his kitchen, heaving furniture into the street."

What does a man do when he reaches the very limit of himself? Can there ever be a way back? New York City or the world, livin' ain't easy.

"Isobel Harper wakes to the dream. The images come back in her waking hours like still frames of cinema noir, the camera shots collapsing and superimposing upon each other: A girl's silent scream caught in the glare of a street light. A man's fist poised at a door."

A child's mind captures snapshots of trauma. What are the long-term effects? Does memory turn our lives into movies?

"I'm dreaming, was my first thought. My body had risen weightless into the air, helped by the movements I'd made, like swimming; the cold night air blew chill on my cheeks and ruffled my hair."

Is it a story about poverty and brutality, or about magic and wonder? Wartime Athens gets a unique treatment in this excellent translation from Greek.