In this collection, nine previously published and four new stories offer the reader a range of snapshots of people engaged in significant life episodes.
There is a lover who accepts that she will not have an enduring relationship, a housekeeper who experiences such passion as she has never known, only to find herself depicted in a novel as cruel and callous.
There is a whimsical story of Tolstoy arriving at a rural Russian railway station to die, while escaping his wife. The need to escape is paramount and the stationmaster's wife escapes also.
A contemporary Juliet discovers how difficult it is to lie to the law, while the wrench of going to boarding school for an English girl is depicted as equally difficult for mother and daughter.
Across all of these situations and the players in them, Tremain is consistently capable in her sensuous prose of exposing a range of human emotions and actions and reactions to events outside their control.
In each setting she gives both event and character due attention and tempts the reader to consider further possible consequences.
- Willie Campbell is a Dunedin educator.
