There was no sign of sympathy or surprise

This is a strange little collection of stories Of course, I was immediately suspect because it was called “tales” but so be it. I read it anyway.

In the first story, a woman is waiting to order two strawberry cakes in memorial of her dead son’s birthday twelve years ago. As she waits, little moments remind her  of various things connected to his life and death. She waits but no one is actually helping any customers.

In another story, the road has been covered in tomatoes as a result of a terrible car accident, but a woman is too focused on her upcoming confrontation with her husband’s mistress to worry about the carnage of the wreck.

Each story picks a small element of the previous one to carry and tell another strange little moment or set of moments. These stories are weird little glimpses into a wider world but do not tell their full secrets either. This has that kind of quality of not looking directly at something so much as seeing a small glance past it and trying to gather all the information from that tiny glimpse, before moving on. Like the scene of death in the car wreck, we are the woman too concerned with a previous engagement to notice the carnage in front of us.

“The door that would not open no matter how hard you pushed, no matter how long you pounded on it. The screams no one heard. Darkness, hunger, pain. Slow suffocation. One day it occurred to me that I needed to experience the same suffering he had.”