If I hadn't read this immediately after Etgar Keret's book (see my previous post, below) I would have said this was the best collection of short stories I'd read in a long time. So this is the second best. These stories are deeply engrossing and painful at the same time, depicting situations of excruciating cruelty, both psychological and sometimes physical. Although varied in setting, they have a common theme: if viciousness is a germ, then the Holocaust was its most powerful vector, yielding acts of heartlessness that spread out and multiply in infinite directions. (OK, that's an awful metaphor - sorry.) The final story,
Free Fruit for Young Widows, attempts to answer the question of where and how the cycle of cruelty may cease, and is a fitting end.
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