As soon as I finished reading Seeing People Off today, I turned to Google to search for any reviews by book critics which might explain what I had missed. This book won the European Union Prize for Literature, yet I rated it as average. My timing was fortuitous because NPR had just posted Michael Schaub's review, in which he described Seeing People Off as a "slim novel told in a series of brief vignettes," in which "the transitions can seem jarring, although that may well be the point." Yes, the transitions were jarring, and if that was intended to be the point, that point was lost on me.

There are some lovely turns of phrase in Seeing People Off, where, in a store's checkout line, the codes "jump[] onto the receipts with a crackling sound [l]ike a fire" and the snow resembles "gray bony faces full of holes and hollows." Like Schaub, I enjoyed the dark humor evident in a taxi driver's droll commentary on the events of 9/11:

"It's really a bit too much, they've overdone it," commented the taxi driver who took us home from the Milan Rastislav Štefánik Airport. "If they blew up a bus or an embassy, I'd understand. That's OK. The Americans are up to their ears in it. Some two-story building or a train, that's one thing. But two skyscrapers, that's too much, they really went overboard."

I also appreciated the chapters entitled "Winter," in which Elza records snatches of conversations overheard from neighboring tables in a café, and "Seeing People Off," in which she traces Ian's mother's slow decline toward death.

In his 2010 review of Seeing People Off, Alexander Halvoník observed that "much will remain unread, the accent from some things will be transferred to others and many things will take on new dimensions." Although too much of Seeing People Off remained unread for my taste, its short length makes it easy for other readers to test the waters for themselves.

This review was based on a free ARC provided by the publisher. ( )