When the Bulgarian author Georgi Gospodinov was writing the novel “Time Shelter,” in 2019, he agonized over a scene he thought might be over the top, even for a work of absurdist fiction.
In the novel, a wave of nostalgia leads several European countries to organize large-scale re-enactments of past events, and Gospodinov was unsure about a section in which a country recreates World War II and invades its neighbor, causing widespread devastation.
“I thought maybe I should have skipped it, it’s too much,” he recently recalled in an interview in Sofia, Bulgaria’s capital. “But then it happened in February of last year,” when Russia invaded Ukraine.
In a field of brickellbush, hundreds of monarch butterflies move with the grace of a Disney fairy waving a wand. They circle back and forth in figure eights all around us, flashing black and orange wings dotted with white, as they fly from stem to stem undisturbed. My guide, Jim, and I take off our hats while my wife, Vanessa, takes out her camera. We stand there, spellbound.
It’s only later that I realize the scene was likely a once-in-a-lifetime experience. But maybe our whole trip was. We were there last October to find a place called the Narrows. This limestone gorge on the Blanco River has hidden, almost tropical pools where honeycombed rock walls, skirted with maidenhair fern, shimmer with the water’s reflection—a Texas oasis like no other. After hearing about the Narrows several years ago and finding pictures online, I dreamt about seeing it for real. But there was another reason for my interest. I had just learned about Josephine Mandamin, an Anishinaabekwe First Nation woman who had popularized the concept of a “water walk.” Undertaken in Canada 20 years ago, hers was an act of defiance against those polluting her community’s water. I felt compelled to commemorate the anniversary of her noble effort.
Traced is a fast-paced Australian noir thriller, taking place across two timelines – one in 2014, when Jeanette plans to help her daughter, Courtney, escape domestic violence, and the other in 2020, in between lockdowns in NSW, where Jane and her daughter Tara are still on edge and trying to stay safe. Going back and forth in time builds the tension well because of the slow revelation about who the characters really are. The dual timeline also allows information to be delivered when it needs to be, ensuring a slow build-up to the climax and an intensity that keeps the pages turning.
The aching heart of “The Librarianist” is a piercing seriocomic character study of isolation and abandonment. Would that deWitt had left his more flamboyant tendencies in the drawer for this one.
Tessa Hadley presents everything as fine at the front while it comes apart comprehensively at the back. The dozen short stories that comprise After the Funeral, her absorbing and thoroughly readable fourth collection, manage with a quiet dexterity the emotional situations that promote this kind of undoing.