The Kingdom of Heaven: Eighty-eight Palm-of-the-Hand Stories

Susan Patrick is a librarian at Ryerson Polytechnical University.

These 88 very short stories (some less than half a page, none longer
than two pages) are philosophical ruminations on almost every aspect of
the human condition: birth, death, love, sex, art, music, religion,
writing, and psychoanalysis.

A wide variety of points of view and voices—male, female, young,
old—are represented in stories that demonstrate a wickedly black sense
of humor on the part of the author. For example, in “Look at Me,” a
woman cures herself of a compulsion to pull out her own hair by pulling
out her husband’s hair while he is asleep. The situations in which
Gould’s characters find themselves are universal, if exaggerated. His
stories can be appreciated on two levels: they can be enjoyed for their
quirky humor, and they can be pondered for their philosophical
implications.