Publications and Research
Document Type
Book
Publication Date
2019
Abstract
Goodison's collection explores the lives of a range of people who find themselves at a pivotal point in life, often brought there through unpredictable, unseen forces. The characters are seemingly ordinary individuals -- teachers, shoemakers, shop clerks -- who at some point reveal themselves to be loners, dissidents, artists, seekers and sages; essentially, representatives of traditions under test. The many material fetishisms of modern life never satisfy or replace our individual desires, and so these characters attempt to offer new perspectives, new ways to look at the world that’s already around them. While the stories are told realistically, they sometimes adopt elements of the whimsical and surreal. As in the fairytale or folk and oral traditions, the characters find ways to transform circumstance so some essence of life can be grasped. For these characters, however, nothing is certain and these stories don’t provide the perfect closure of the fairy tale but instead a sense of meditation and longing, perhaps a provocation to act. The stories illuminate aspects of ourselves as human beings, as Americans (whatever our origins), and as citizens in a world with rapidly changing boundaries. It is a multi-voiced text as the stories are told from varying perspectives and from a range of characters, (from Amazon.com).