Creaking in Their Skins

R.G. Moyles is a professor of English at the University of Alberta and
the co-author of Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities: British Views
of Canada, 1880–1914.

This collection of short stories about a variety of strange encounters
with strange people, in settings ranging from St. John’s to Egypt, is
filled with fine passages such as the following: “We eat while the sun
has one last look around its borders. The desert reaches out on all
sides with no disturbance. Every place that becomes familiar is where
the heart longs to return. And here there is a slow revolving pace that
does not care for its own completion.” As one critic has suggested,
the stories are “filled with rich chiaroscuro” (though there is more
dark than light). But what is the point of it all? All the lives seem so
pointless—so much vacancy, so much revolving without completion. I
suppose that is the point. If one loves the style but hates the
masochism, does one recommend it or not? The answer is, of course, yes
and no.