belindawood

The best of the three is the center novella, 'Rare and Endangered Species', which explores the corrosive effect that a mother's sudden suicide has on her friends and family - familiar waters, but Bausch's remarkable patience and subtlety wring poignancy out of the semi-rote material. At times I had to flip back a bit to remember how certain characters related to one another, but that's more a remark about my memory than about Bausch's prose. The serial killer/rapist stuff in the final novella was a little....odd. Recommended. Bausch's command of the family dynamic is on full display here; the cumulative effect of his collection of shorts had more of an effect on me than these three short novels had, but they're still quite good.

2022-10-29 03:14