The writing is accomplished. The first story packs a mighty punch. Most of the other stories are less interesting. ( )

These historical and contemporary stories are atmospheric and uncanny.

"Hourglass," which takes place at a girls' school, seems a predecessor to the author's novel The Illness Lesson (2020).

"World's End" centers the architect hired to design houses for that piece of land in Massachusetts (now conservation land in Hingham), and why the houses were never built.

In "Granna," thirty-something Teresa, along with her older sister and her niece, picks up her grandmother from a nursing home for a cabin week in Vermont, where Granna thrives and Teresa muses on a recent breakup.

"All the Keys to All the Doors" was my favorite story in the collection. Cele, who has donated many town buildings - all of which have miraculous properties not fully understood by anyone - is called in the wake of a shooting at the elementary school.

"The Saltwater Cure" is set at an inn near a marsh where a girl was miraculously cured from polio; a sixteen-year-old boy falls in lust with a married guest who cannot feel her own hands.

In "Ailments," a woman envies her older sister's marriage to a doctor during a time of plague outside London, without understanding the relationship.

In "We Show What We Have Learned," a fifth-grade teacher literally falls to pieces in front of her class.

In "The Drop," Lily feels uneasy being made to wear her soldier fiance's parachute as a wedding dress.

"The Renaissance Person" is also set at a school, where a teacher attempts to save her mentee from falling in love with her competitor.

See also: Kelly Link, Neil Gaiman

Quotes

From "Hourglass"
Yet it seemed to me, there in the dark, that any progress that could be undone in this way was not real progress at all. (16)

From "World's End"
Already he could not look at the land without seeing what he would do with it. (28)

This place would be equal to his vision for it; he was standing inside a world he had plucked full-bodied from his own head. (41)

From "Granna"
She wondered how it happened that some people just turned out obviously better than others. (56)

When children wanted things, they wanted them so desperately. (59)

From "All the Keys to All the Doors"
The quiet was another time's quiet. (74)

She didn't cry. To cry would be disrespectful - what would it leave for the others to do, with so much more to grieve than she had? Expression had a ceiling whose height must be considered, and where one's claim lay beneath it. (78)

From some things, Cele thought, there was no recovering. (86)

None of these women was ever getting out of this moment, and it was too much to expect them to drag it around with them through the rest of their slow, slow lives. (87)

From "The Saltwater Cure"
She had a way of rewriting things so they read as she wanted them to. (95)

Before him loomed countless thickets of humiliation into which he might stumble. (110)

From "Ailments"
"We live our lives with a foolish illusion of permanence. We prefer to remain ignorant, even when such ignorance requires the deliberate aversion of our gaze." (117)

From "The Renaissance Person Tournament"
He is only very charming, and too clever to be caught being anything he doesn't want to be. These are not talents; they're weapons. (170)

Teachers are used to having captive audiences, and it makes us bad at conversation. (172) ( )

I was hoping these short stories would feel similar to Kelly Link's - they're fairly long, about 20 pages or so, with plots that are slightly odd, and written in a strong, measured, clear voice. While they did hit all these notes, the stories simply weren't interesting to me. I didn't read them all, but the ones I did read seemed like they could have been first chapters of a novel. Maybe this author's strengths would be a better fit for long fiction. ( )