Product Description

Tht title story of this collection describes the experiences of twin sisters who volunteer to work behind the front lines in France in the last year of the Great War. The sisters' bond to each other is so intense and excluding that they experience the rest of the world as though in a dream.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3024267 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Review
In this exquisite collection of short stories, Canadian writer Mary Swan lures us into a world of small things, narrative vignettes embroidered with recurring images and themes, leaving an overall impression of gentle melancholy and loss. She begins with the First World War. Twin sisters are working near the front line. Completely inseparable, tainted by the early death of their mother, they befriend a young soldier. In a single act of independence, their lives are rent asunder, with an inevitable but terrible outcome. The waste and tragedy of the Great War resonates through the pages, the shadows of young soldiers haunt this misty pageant of love, hope, and above all, dreams. What might have been, what should have been; the unforeseen effect of a journey taken, an off-hand comment. Nothing is too humble for note, from the fuzz of a warm peach to the tinkle of frozen maple leaves falling to the earth. Betrayal in varying guises is omnipresent - lovers, friendship and the duplicity of life itself, which promises so much and gives so little. Mothers mourn for their lost babies, children's happiness is blighted by the death of a sibling or the early demise of a parent. Nothing is certain and just as hope appears, it is cruelly snatched away by the vagaries of fate. Patterns set in motion decades before still reverberate through lives, like the inexorable waves of the sea. Winner of the O Henry Prize for short fiction, Mary Swan writes with an unhurried pace, a true storyteller recounting workaday lives, starred with moments of wonder and insight. Each story is a miniature work of art in itself, tenderly crafted to perfection. (Kirkus UK)

Vogue
‘Here is a writer of such delicacy, precision and poise that it’s hard to believe she’s new to publishing... spellbinding'

Observer
‘Tales of haunting, terrible brilliance…Swan’s prose is perfectly judged - sleek, imagistic, and never over-written’